At my wits end...

[coloradogeek]

Background: I use ESXi 4.x on Dell PowerEdge R710's utilizing Equallogic SANs.

I cannot get a virtualized install of FreeNAS 8 or 8.2 to play with ESXi 5 update 1 - PERIOD.

I've followed this guide many, many, MANY times to try and figure it out on my own... I guess I don't have enough experience with FreeNAS to figure out what is going on: http://www.vladan.fr/how-to-configure-freenas-8-for-iscsi-and-connect-to-esxi/

FreeNAS installs fine, I've gotten it to work ONCE, but the results are not repeatable, which bums me out big time.

I'm trying to set it up virtually today on both VirtualBox and also on VMWS9, and I'm just not getting anywhere.

ESXi absolutely refuses to see the disk share on FreeNAS even on the same network segment. I was trying it earlier on a separate "iSCSI" network, but that didn't work either.

Are they just not compatible? I also tried plain Extents instead of Device Extents, and it's the same deal - ESXi won't see them.

Is there an incompatibility? I tried searching for one on the forums before posting, I couldn't find one. Folks swear they get it working, but if I follow the directions verbatim, and it doesn't work... I'm pretty pissed off.

 

[jgreco]

Lots of people have done it. It works fine, but the configuration on both sides is less than straightforward. You would be well-served to turn on console messages (system->settings->advanced->show console msgs) and/or be watching the logfiles on both the ESXi and FreeNAS hosts to help you spot your blunder (and don't worry, lots of people have made those same blunders, because it is a finicky thing to get all the details right.)

 

[coloradogeek]

Thanks for the tip on the console - I was looking for something like that without needing yet another window open, but I don't understand why it would be giving off authentication errors when I'm already using difficult to guess passwords and such.

Even trying it with no authentication (no CHAP) it doesn't want to connect. I've followed every guide I can find, and they're all missing data, or there's something deeper going on here.


Oct 9 07:53:53 freenas istgt[2203]: istgt_iscsi.c:1618:istgt_iscsi_auth_params: ***ERROR*** auth failed (user chapuser)
Oct 9 07:53:53 freenas istgt[2203]: istgt_iscsi.c:2408:istgt_iscsi_op_login: ***ERROR*** iscsi_auth_params() failed

I've tried chapuser, I've tried the iSCSI target name from ESXi, nothing I find online works for these particular errors.

Prior threads on FreeNAS show similar results, but no one is answering the threads. I realize there are folks who do this often enough that feel they don't need to answer the questions from people like me, but you guys started somewhere.

 

[coloradogeek]

Seems as though our friendly neighborhood FreeBSD OS is *itchier than some varieties of OSes. Another forum user suggested I restart FreeNAS after the configuration - PRESTO. Everything works as it should.

It had been ingrained into me from my posts on the pfSense forums that you should "never" need to restart the OS for configuration changes. Whoops.

Hope that helps others out there.

 

[jgreco]

That's correct, you shouldn't. It'd be very interesting to know why that happened to you. I've set up iSCSI many times on FreeNAS and never had to restart for something like that, at least that I can recall right now, but I tend to be very methodical and scripted. It's quite possible that doing some steps in an unusual order results in something not being updated or restarted at the right time. For example, it *is* (or was?) necessary to restart the iSCSI service manually after making a variety of changes.

 

[cyberjock]

I've never had to restart my server, but alot of people have problems for days. They post asking for help and after a week of troubleshooting and experimenting they decide to reboot. Poof, the server is working fine.