Sunday, November 15, 2009

How To: Free iSCSI storage with Fedora 10

This how-to guide explains how did I set up an iSCSI target using Fedora 10 and iSCSI initiator on Windows Vista. I was always wondering to setup a free iSCSI storage at home to enable me further run testing with SCVMM (System Center Virtual Machine Manager) R2 with CSV (Cluster Share Volume) as it is hard to get a copy of Windows iSCSI Target Software, unless you have a very good relations with OEM partners.
As hardware remain my main obstacle, I actually setup the iSCSI Target server on Virtual PC


To find out how Fedora 10 can be setup on Virtual PC, see my blog on How-To: Fedora 10 Installtion on Virtual PC here.

Setting up the iSCSI Target (Fedora 10)


  1. Get a copy of iSCSI Enterprise Target (IET) at RPM Fusion
rpm -Uvh http://download1.rpmfusion.org/free/fedora/rpmfusion-free-release-stable.noarch.rpm http://download1.rpmfusion.org/nonfree/fedora/rpmfusion-nonfree-release-stable.noarch.rpm


  1. Install the iSCSI target packages:
yum install iscsitarget kmod-iscsitarget

  1. Restart the server.

  1. Get a copy of RPM package of Webmin at www.webmin.com and install in on the server.
    wget http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/webadmin/webmin-1.490-1.noarch.rpm
    rpm -U webmin-1.490-1.noarch.rpm


    1. Get a copy of iSCSI Target module from http://www.webmin.com/cgi-bin/search_third.cgi?recent=1.
      wget http://update.intellique.com/pub/iscsitarget-0.9.3.wbm

    1. Access to Webmin using you favorite internet browser. Select Hardware and then iSCSI target management.



    1. Click on Create a new target



    1. Type in your prefer target name and alias



    1. Click on Add a Logical Unit


    1. In my case, I have select to use Local file. If you want to use block device, refer to the Use Block IO bottom of this post.


    1. When completed the LUN is ready


    1. You are now require to restart the iscsi-target service

    Setting up the iSCSI Initiator (Windows Vista)

    1. Go to Discovery tab. Add a Target portals.



    1. Go to Targets tab.



    1. Select the target and click Log on. Click OK.



    1. The status now will turn to connected.


    1. Right-click My Computer and select Manage.
    2. Go to Disk Management and then Storage. The new disk now is visible.


    Use Block IO
    It required you to allocate a new hard drive, or storage media for you to use BlockIO in IET. In my case, i am attaching a new hard drive and detect as /dev/sdb.


    1. Check the drive detail
      fdisk -l /dev/sdb

    2. Create new partition
      fdisk /dev/sdb
      Command (m for help): n
      accept default value to allocate all capacity

    3. Create filesystem. In my case, i am attaching the LUN to my Windows server, therefore i used NTFS
      mkntfs -f -L LUN1 -v /dev/sdb1

    4. Edit the ietd.conf
      Target iqn.2009-11:com.cotonso.storage2.lun1
              Alias com.cotonso.storage2.lun1
              Lun 0 Type=blockio,Path=/dev/sdb1,IOMode=wthru

    5. Restart IET service

    References

    Thursday, November 12, 2009

    How To: Fedora 10 Installation on Virtual PC

    1. Get Fedora 10 Distribution from http://fedoraproject.org/get-fedora.html .
    2. Create a virtual machine as ussual. Capture the Fedora 10 ISO image or use your CD\DVD drive if you have burn a copy to a disc.
    3. Boot up the virtual machine an you will find yourself at the boot screen.
    4. Hit e to edit the boot parameters.


    5. Add noreplace-paravirt singles as shown.




    6. Hit b to continue the boot process.



    7. Choose the packages according to your prefer preferences


    8. Installation in progress


    9. Click Finish to reboot the machine and complete the installation.

    10. For the first boot up, quickly hit F10 just after the BIOS screen to display the GRUB boot opyions.
    11. Type in the boot parameters as shown in step 5 and continue the boot process.
    12. Login to the system and ammend the /boot/grub/grub.conf file as shown below.




    13. Save and exit the editor. Run terminal# grub.
           Grub#> grub-install --no-floppy /dev/sda

    14. You will be able to load up to the login screen the next time you boot up.

    Wednesday, October 28, 2009

    DPM 2010 Beta is available now

    The Data Protection Manager (DPM) team at Microsoft is announcing the arrival of Data Protection Manager 2010 Beta.

    Anand Kamat the Group Product Manager for the DPM development team, and since shipping DPM 2007 SP1 in Jan 2009, quoted that it have been on an amazing journey to get this feature packed release out to all Microsoft customers.

    This new definitely did cought my attention as i have have Hyper-V and SCVMM deployed on Windows Server 2008 R2 using Cluster Shared Volumes (CSV) cluster. DPM 2010 new features now support and protect CSV cluster.

    "This has been one of the biggest investments that we made in DPM 2010, and we hope that you will absolutely love the features.  First and foremost, DPM 2010 Beta protects highly available virtual machines (VM) deployed on Windows Server 2008 R2 using Cluster Shared Volumes (CSV) clusters -- in addition to standalone Hyper-V servers and Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V clusters. For all above mentioned server configurations, DPM 2010 Beta supports:
    Seamless protection of Live Migrating VMs (For Windows Server 2008 R2): DPM 2010 is LiveMigration aware and seamlessly protects a VM after it migrates to another node of the Hyper-V R2 cluster to another without manual intervention.
    Item Level Recovery from host level backup: DPM 2010 Beta supports item level recovery (ILR) which allows you to do granular recovery of files and folders, volumes and virtual hard disks (VHD) from a host level backup of Hyper-V VMs to a network share or a volume on a DPM protected server.
    Original Location Recovery: DPM 2010 Beta supports online recovery of the protected VM to the original location.
    Alternate Host Recovery: DPM 2010 Beta supports alternate location recovery (ALR) which allows you to recover a Hyper-V VM to an alternate stand-alone or clustered Hyper-V host."

     For those out there who have CSV cluster deployed, or looking forward to deploy SCVMM, DPM 2010 may be one of your preferable solution.


    Peoples also claim that DPM2010 are now able to protect non-domain and workgroup clients.