ISCSI

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Introduction

iSCSI is SCSI over IP. It is a standard described in RFC 3720 and 3783. The implementation is split into separate client-server components.

Components

iSCSI Initiator - client-side implementation to attach to iSCSI block devices over the network (IP).

iSCSI Target - server-side implementation to expose disks, partitions or volumes as block devices over the network.

Network Details

iSCSI normally uses the following default as per standards.

  • Port: 3260
  • Protocol: TCP
  • Block size: 512 <= Adjustable


There are at least two major vendor implementations. One is by Cisco and the other by Intel.

Authentication

Most implementations support CHAP as authentication mechanism.


Operating system support

Microsoft

See Microsoft Support for iSCSI web page.

Microsoft provides a free "Initiator" utility which can be downloaded here.

Linux

Under Linux, the iSCSI statistics can be seen under /proc/scsi/iscsi

Ubuntu

Nothing available for Dapper (6.06) in base, universe or multiverse). Compile the open-iscsi by hand (see below).

For Feisty & later version, install open-iscsi from the universe repository.

Some time after that, the package names changes to open-iscsi-utils.

Red Hat

Package iscsi-initiator-utils is in the base. See Related Links for an iscsi-target setup. Read all the gory details at Installation and Design Notes for iSCSI RHEL 4 U2

CentOS

See Red Hat above.

Fedora / Fedora Core

See Red Hat above.

Debian

Recent development efforts have merged into open-iscsi.

OpenFiler

See http://www.openfiler.com/ iSCSI support is available in v2.3 and looks rather nifty.

Nexenta

Nexenta is a hybrid operating system combining OpenSolaris, Linux (Ubuntu) and ZFS.

Mac OS/X

Unknown

FreeBSD

There is an iscsi-target port available. This is merely a clone of the netbsd-iscsi port shown below. As of 7.0-RELEASE initiator support is available via iscsi_initiator(8) kernel module and iscontrol(4). See http://www.cyberciti.biz/faq/freebsd-iscsi-initiator-howto/

FreeNAS

Reported has iSCSI support. TBD.

Isilon

Isilon OneFS is based on FreeBSD and offers iSCSI target support.

NetBSD

There is an netbsd-iscsi package available as of 4.0.

See ftp://ftp.netbsd.org/pub/NetBSD/misc/agc/ for a couple of instructional HOWTOs.

OpenBSD

Unknown

Solaris & OpenSolaris

Unknown

AIX

Unknown

HP-UX

Unknown

Interoperability matrix

Please see our iSCSI Interoperability Matrix for viewing and adding compatibility entries.

Related Links

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