iSCSI Basics & Best Practices | CBT Nuggets

In this video, CBT Nuggets trainer Chris Ward covers setting up, installing and running iSCSI servers. If you're setting up Storage Spaces for your network, you'll want to follow along and see how to get your iSCSI Target configured and know how to have the iSCSI Initiator connect.

Configuring iSCSI is all about learning how to set up initiators and targets so that you can get block level access, that a SCSI device allows, over ethernet connections.

iSCSI is the best way to connect up to a WAN over the ethernet: as well as storage pools. iSNS, the Internet Storage Name Service protocol, helps us interact between iSNS servers and iSNS clients.

The target for iSCSI will be storage space on a virtual disk. The initiator is a device that initiates the connection with the target over an ethernet connection. Targets and initiators can be set up in hyper-v as well.

Follow along with Chris to see how to set up the right roles, configure authentication settings, and set up iSCSI Storage Spaces.

0:25: The topics of iSCSI Initiator and Target, and iSNS introduced
1:00: iSCSI Initiators and Targets, defined
2:25: Setting up the role within Server Manager dashboard
4:00: Setting up new iSCSI virtual disks with the wizard
7:15: Initiating contact with the target
13:00: Managing all targets and all initiators

Start learning with CBT Nuggets:

[chromerims]

Excellent, highly relevant and useful content in 2023👍
Be well, everyone.

[oswaldojfernandez]

All of this stuff used to really fly right over my head. Ever since I got my first real IT job and have been dealing with SANs and servers, I have been learning a lot. Experience for me is key. I have read about iSCSI many times, but it all finally makes sense this time around. Awesome!

[vuhszuy]

Easlier the best explanation of iSCSI on YouTube. Great job & thank you!!

[tux]

I was looking for a NBD client for Windows because I thought iSCSI looked overly complex for my home lab, but this video made it simple and get me up and running with iSCSI. Thank you very much!

[TheFoeni]

Hi!

great Video, for me as a german it is really easy to understand your english, really good work!!!

[VGXey]

Thank you, I understood iSCSI finally!

[qsubzero]

Trying to follow this vid, i know it's old, but i'm learning. how do you have the sc-01 that you can add around the 5:50 mark? did you set it up in advance? I have a single Server 2012 vm running, nothing else. Do i need another windows vm server, joined to a domain of the first one? (doing this all within Win10 pro Hyper V btw)

[rewrittenrewritten]

Wow super informative. Thanks so much!!!

[blainebrown]

When you use diskpart and clean a device thats been set up with ISCSI, do the settings also disappear or will the SCSI disk be connectable using ISNS even after the hard disk target was formatted by another user?

[SwishaMane]

Is iSCSI reliable 24/7 between windows and a file server like truenas?

[MrNoorBasha]

What does the clearing do?? When we create iSCSI status shows clearing what does it do??

[hassansheikh]

How did you add IQN in Access Server section at 5:46

[klusis]

Hello! DO you have a tutorial for a clustering with two iscsi targets? i don't unterstand how this works.

[vishalwaghmare]

Thank you for video.
Can you share how to mount iSCSI drive on Linux Server....

[sankareshkannan]

Sir, How this iSCSI Target server would really helpful in production environment? While initiator connected to clients . Whether data will be available in clients or iSCSI Target server if out of the network?

[TheTrifel]

So just curious about bios level settings, if you have a broadcom daughter board nic that has the iscsi feature and 10gbsfp . It lists a Mac address for the iscsi in the hardware settings for idrac, so curious to understand how this works if you have multiple iscsi targets you have set in say omv

Lun 0 and lun 1 no one seems to go into the bios level settings

My nic gives many options for hba foc and iscsi where you set the initiator and other settings

It's very confusing at the hardware level understanding how this works

So let's say I have one Mac address but 2 hard drives I have set as targets in omv, there are 2 target setting sections in the nic controller

There seems to be no guides for setting things up from the ground up so to speak

Anyone have any clarification for dell r720 style servers running proxmox with hardware raid h710p

Just trying to use omv to pass a couple drives thru on a vm that would be accessible to multiple computers in the house, storage and software update storage drives ...any clear ideas on how one goes about setting up at hardware level

[rfrancoi]

What an AWESOME video. Part of which lesson does this pertain to?

[dasabaja]

Will the actions taken on the Server side affect the data on the NAS volume?

[pinhead]

do we need to have separate NIC cards for ISCI networks? Or does the Ethernet cards do the Job?

[bncampbell]

Thank you.  Good information.  You confirmed what I thought I knew.  :)