6.5

Table Of Contents
Managing iSCSI Storage 5
ESXi systems include iSCSI technology to access remote storage using an IP network. You can use the
vSphere Web Client, commands in the esxcli iscsi namespace, or the vicfg-iscsi command to congure
both hardware and software iSCSI storage for your ESXi system.
See the vSphere Storage documentation for additional information.
This chapter includes the following topics:
n
“iSCSI Storage Overview,” on page 69
n
“Protecting an iSCSI SAN,” on page 71
n
“Command Syntax for esxcli iscsi and vicfg-iscsi,” on page 73
n
“iSCSI Storage Setup with ESXCLI,” on page 78
n
“iSCSI Storage Setup with vicfg-iscsi,” on page 84
n
“Listing and Seing iSCSI Options,” on page 89
n
“Listing and Seing iSCSI Parameters,” on page 90
n
“Enabling iSCSI Authentication,” on page 94
n
“Set Up Ports for iSCSI Multipathing,” on page 97
n
“Managing iSCSI Sessions,” on page 98
iSCSI Storage Overview
With iSCSI, SCSI storage commands that your virtual machine issues to its virtual disk are converted into
TCP/IP protocol packets and transmied to a remote device, or target, on which the virtual disk is located.
To the virtual machine, the device appears as a locally aached SCSI drive.
To access remote targets, the ESXi host uses iSCSI initiators. Initiators transport SCSI requests and responses
between ESXi and the target storage device on the IP network. ESXi supports the following types of
initiators.
n
Software iSCSI adapter - VMware code built into the VMkernel. Allows an ESXi host to connect to the
iSCSI storage device through standard network adapters. The software initiator handles iSCSI
processing while communicating with the network adapter.
n
Hardware iSCSI adapter - Ooads all iSCSI and network processing from your host. Hardware iSCSI
adapters are broken into two types.
n
Dependent hardware iSCSI adapter - Leverages the VMware iSCSI management and conguration
interfaces.
VMware, Inc.
69