Now we have the Networking in place, we need some Shared Storage. Im going to refer to a few older posts of mine to set this up with FreeNAS which works really well. I may look at other solutions at some point but for now this does exactly what I need.
Installing FreeNAS into VMware Workstation Pt1
Installing FreeNAS into VMware Workstation Pt2
Installing FreeNAS into VMware Workstation Pt3 (iSCSI)
This should be enough to get going (May add some NFS Later)
So, I followed my own instructions, even up to using the ISCSI Initiator in Windows to check I can connect. The only thing I have done for this lab is add a second Interface to my FreeNAS Server – the usual way, via Virtual Machine Settings, Add… and then added (in my case) a new Network Adapter on the VMnet 3 network.
In FreeNAS I went to Network and Add Interface – then added a second Interface with the VMnet3 IP Range
Im going to use the Software iSCSI Adapter within vCenter to connect.
Navigate to the ESXi Host you want to connect to the iSCSI Target and select Configure
Select the Green Plus sign and select Software iSCSI adapter
Select ok in the Add Software iSCSI Adapter Window – this is advising to complete the config in the Adapter Details section
Navigate to the iSCSI Software Adapter – in my case vmhba65 and select it
Select Network Port Bindings and the Green Plus – Here we are going to Bind our Network Adapter we created earlier to the iSCSI Initiator
Select the iSCSI Port Group you created and click ok
Throughout this process you will see: Due to recent configuration changes, a rescan of this storage adapter is recommended
Select the below Icon to rescan the Hosts adapter
Now time to add our Targets IP – Select Targets > Dynamic Discovery and then Add…
Enter the IP you assigned to the iSCSI Target and click OK
Now do another Rescan
Select Datastores and Create a new Datastore
Select VMFS and click Next
Select your FreeNAS Disk, Give the Datastore a Name and select Next
Im going to choose VMFS 6 over 5 and click Next
Im also keeping default Partition config so click Next and Finish
Repeat on all Hosts and you should have the shared iSCSI datastore connected
