EqualLogic storage (iSCSI) on Fedora 13

I’ve started playing with iSCSI devices in earnest. Specifically, I’m having a lot of fun playing around with an EqualLogic array (PS Series array) at work and getting a Linux (Fedora 13) environment up and running.

It’s pretty straight forward, really.

At its simplest and  highest(ish) level:

1. Install the iSCSI initiator management utilities for Fedora 13 (# yum install iscsi-initiator-utils)
2. Identify (change) the iqn for your Fedora 13 host (# {cat|vi} /etc/iscsi/initiatorname.iscsi)
3. Configure your target(s), define LUN(s) and set up ACLs for the LUNs (Volumes) you’re wanting to use in your EqualLogic group
4. Scan the iSCSI target (EqualLogic group) (# iscsiadm –mode discovery –type sendtargets –portal <ip for EQL group>:3260)
5. Log in to the target & volume (LUN) you’re wanting to use (# iscsiadm –mode node –login –target <iqn for LUN/Volume on EQL array> )
6. Repeat for all of the volumes/LUNs you’re wanting to access from the Fedora 13 host
7. Use the volumes/LUNs you’ve “imported”
8. Optionally (I recommend doing this for clarity), log out and remove (delete) all of the Volumes (LUNs) you’re not using on the Fedora host
   1. List all of the discovered volumes/LUNs from the target: (# iscsiadm –mode node)
   2. Log out the volumes/LUN’s you do not intend to access from the host (# iscsiadm –mode node –logout –target <iqn of Volume/LUN> )
   3. Delete the volume(s)/LUN(s) you don’t want: (# iscsiadm –mode node –target <iqn of Volume/LUN> –op delete )

If you don’t like “long” option names, substitute;

• –mode with -m
• –target with -T
• –login with -l
• –logout with -u
• –op with -o
• ‘sendtargets‘ with ‘st‘

From now on, whenever the iscsid daemon is started during boot, the host will log on to the volume(s)/LUNs during boot, the /dev/ entries will be created – but not be persistent across boots, so make sure you use these LUNs with either LVM or use the UUID= or file system LABEL=<name> when mounting file systems hosted on these Volume(s)/LUNs! – and the devices will be accessible from the host.  More on creating UDEV rules for your iSCSI Volume(s)/LUN(s) in the next  installment of the series.

Of course, now there’s configuring for Volume/LUN path availability, etc, etc. Multipath configuration which is documented by DELL in a tech report paper on our EqualLogic support web site (requires a valid support contract/warranty for login)- and I’ll summarize in another post.

I’ve got a configuration in mind which I’ll document over time, probably. Sorry for being so incredibly vague on the time-line, but my job isn’t to document Linux and EqualLogic configurations so I’m only doing this “for fun” between learning about the PS Series arrays (have to do a live demo “soon”) and various other job tasks.