- Installed ESXi on a physical host
- Created VMs for Active Directory and vCenter Server
- Created a Vyatta VM to act as a router
- Created an OpenFiler VM to act as a SAN/NAS storage array
- Created two virtual (nested) ESXi server
At this point in the build, we need to connect everything together.
In order to allow the vESXi hosts to access the "SAN", they need to be connected to the correct LAN. To do this, first note down the MAC addresses of the interfaces you have assigned to the Storage LAN. These details can be obtained by using the vSphere Client connected to the pESXi server and editing the settings of the vESXi VM:
With the MAC addresses noted, switch to the vSphere Client connected to the vCenter Server, select one of the vESXi hosts, Configuration, Network Adapters. Identify the vmnics that correspond to the Storage LAN adapters.
Staying on the Configuration screen, select Networking and Add Networking.
Specify the Connection Type as VMkernel, Create a virtual switch and select the two vmnics that are connected to the Storage LAN. Give the network a suitable label (e.g., "Storage LAN"), then assign an IP address on the storage LAN subnet (e.g., 192.168.20.101).
The end result should appear similar to the following:
At this point, the hosts are ready to connect to the storage. The next step is to configure our OpenFiler "SAN/NAS appliance" and share out some storage.
Setup SAN storage
Log into the OpenFiler web interface (https://192.168.20.1:446) as the openfiler user (default password is "password"). In the original build, I added two 100GB hard disks in addition to the 8GB install disk. We will create one as an NFS share and the second as an iSCSI target.
OpenFiler is built on Linux, so an understanding of Linux LVM is useful. A very basic summary of Linux LVM:
- Physical disks are encapsulated and referred to as "Physical Volumes" (PVs)
- One of more PVs are combined together into a Volume Group (VG)
- A VG is carved up into Logical Volumes (LVs)
- A filesystem is created on an LV
Click the Volumes button
Click the link to "Create new physical volumes"
Select the first non-OS disk (/dev/sdb on my configuration)
Create a partition with the following properties:
- Mode: Primary
- Partition Type: Physical Volume
Click Volume Groups
Under the "Create a new volume group" section, enter a name (e.g., "vmware"), put a tick next to the newly created physical volume and click "Add Volume Group".
First, let's create an NFS datastore. To do this, click Add Volume.
Under "Create a volume in
When this is complete, create an iSCSI datastore by clicking Add Volume again.
Enter a new name (e.g., "ds02"), a description (e.g., "iSCSI datastore"), assign all remaining space in the volume group and select the partition type as iSCSI. Then click Create. The result should look similar to this:
The OpenFiler appliance will now have the two datastores configured, but they are not published yet. Click the Services button and enable the "NFSv3 server" and the "iSCSI target server".
Click the System button and scroll down to the section titled "Network Access Control". In order for a host to see the OpenFiler storage, it needs to match an ACL entry. The most secure way to do this is to enter the IP address of each VM host. The easiest way is to specify the entire storage LAN subnet (192.168.20.0/24):
Map the iSCSI volume to the ACL by clicking the Volumes button, then select "iSCSI Targets". The system will present a new iSCSI target name. Click Add. To assign the iSCSI volume to the target, click the LUN Mapping button and click Map.
Click the Network ACL button and change the host access configuration to Allow and Update.
Share the NFS volume by clicking the Shares button. Click the NFS Datastore and create a sub-folder (e.g., "VMs"):
Click on the new sub-folder and select "Make Share". Scroll to the bottom of the new window and change the NFS setting to RW. Click the Edit button and set the UID/GID mapping to no_root_squash:
With these options set, click Update.
Finally, change Share Access Control Mode to "Public guest access" and click Update.
Switch back to the vSphere Client connected to the vCenter Server, select the first VM host, select Configure, Storage Adapters. Select the iSCSI Software Adapter (probably vmhba33) and select Properties. Click the Configure button and put a tick next Enabled to turn on iSCSI. Click OK and then select the Dynamic Discovery tab. Click Add and enter the IP address of the OpenFiler server. With iSCSI enabled and configured, click Rescan All, scanning for new storage devices and new VMFS volumes. If all is successful, you should see the new iSCSI volume appear.
Click Storage and Add Storage. Select Disk/LUN and the iSCSI disk should appear. Select it, click Next and create a new partition. Enter a datastore name (e.g., OpenFiler iSCSI) and choose a maximum file size (doesn't matter which since the disk is only small). Finish clicking through the wizard and the new datastore should appear in the list.
Click Add Storage again. Select Network File System and click next. Enter the IP address of the OpenFiler server (192.168.20.1) with a folder path in the format of /mnt/volumegroup/logicalvolume/sharename (e.g., /mnt/vmware/ds01/VMs). Give the Datastore Name something suitable (e.g., OpenFiler NFS).
The datastore view in vSphere client should now look similar to the following:
Repeat the adding of storage on the second vESXi host. After scanning for the iSCSI storage, the datastore should appear automatically. NFS storage will still need to be entered manually.
The next step will be to finish configuring out networks and setting up vMotion...
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