VMware vSphere SDKs and Tools 6.5

8.0 7.0 6.7 6.5

Configure iSCSI Initiators

After you have configured the VMkernel to support software iSCSI, you can configure the storage initiators for iSCSI.
To configure iSCSI initiators, use the following steps.
  1. Access the list of available HBAs on the host system.
    You can do this by creating a property collector with
    HostSystem
     as the starting point. See property-collector.ditamap#GUID-7A3F1FB4-4EF7-41AD-B6BF-0AED5A321585-en. From the
    HostSystem
    .
    config
     property, you can obtain the list (array) of host bus adapters by specifying this property path: 
    config.storageDevice.hostBusAdapter
    The property path returns an array of host bus adapters. For example: 
    hostBusAdapter["key-vim.host.BlockHba-vmhba32"]
hostBusAdapter["key-vim.host.BlockHba-vmhba33"]
hostBusAdapter["key-vim.host.BlockHba-vmhba34"]
hostBusAdapter["key-vim.host.BlockHba-vmhba35"]
hostBusAdapter["key-vim.host.BlockHba-vmhba1"]
...
  2. From the array, select the host bus adapter (instance of
    HostHostBusAdapter
    ) that you want to configure and obtain its
    key
     property, which is the device name of the host bus adapter as a string.
  3. Determine the capabilities of the adapter by retrieving the properties of the
    HostHostBusAdapter
     object.
  4. Configure the initiator.
    • For an independent hardware initiator, configure the IP address.
    • For a software initiator, enable the software initiator in the VMkernel.
  5. Configure the iSCSI name by calling
    HostStorageSystem.UpdateInternetScisiName
     and the alias by running
    HostStorageSystem.UpdateInternetScisiAlias
    .
  6. Configure target discovery by calling
    HostStorageSystem.UpdateInternetScisiHbaDiscoveryProperties
    .
    The method takes a
    HostInternetScisiHbaDiscoveryProperties
     data object that you can configure.
  7. (Optional) Set the authentication information by calling
    HostStorageSystem.UpdateInternetScisiAuthenticationProperties
    .
    The
    HostInternetScsiHbaAuthenticationProperties
     object you pass into that method includes properties for configuring CHAP and Mutual CHAP. See the
    vSphere Storage
     documentation for information about securing your iSCSI storage array.
  8. Configure access to the targets.
  9. Rescan the HBAs.
    Rescan enables the HBAs to discover the new storage devices. You can either rescan a single HBA with
    HostStorageSystem.RescanHba
    , specifying the HBA ID as a parameter, or rescan all HBAs using
    HostStorageSystem.RescanAllHba
    .

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