I’ve been doing a lot of work with Openfiler, a well regarded Open Source Storage Appliance Software package. With Openfiler, you can take “any old” server you have laying around and make a iSCSI, CIFS or NFS file server easily and quickly. Here are my notes on getting Openfiler installed and working for iSCSI.Openfiler does all sorts of filer duties, like iSCSI, NFS, CFS, FTP, etc. I’m using it as an iSCSI backend for VMware ESX and Citrix XenServer. This document will focus on using the iSCSI features first, and then maybe I’ll add other sections later.
I don’t intend for this to duplicate the contents of the Openfiler manual. The Openfiler people made the basic install and configuration dead easy. Really.
If you want a screenshot by screenshot manual, buy one from Openfiler. The Openfiler folks make their living selling manuals and support. I bought one, because I think they are doing a great job. You should, too. Their manual covers basic OpenFiler operations, but doesn’t cover some of the cooler advanced features, like replication.
As I run across configuration issues not covered in their manual, and figure out some of the advanced features, I’ll post notes here. Stay tuned.
I’m also going to do some benchmarks with OpenFiler running head to head against dedicated iSCSI arrays.
