Use iSNS to simplify LinuxiSCSI Management in RHEL6

One engineer from the ShyamIyer-Dell's Linux design team stored the configuration as a tedious, time-consuming, and complex program. Dell has been working with operating system partners to simplify this process. At the 2009RedHat summit, we released a new architecture that simplifies storage configuration through industry-standard iSCSI and iSNS protocols. On RHEL6, we finally completed this architecture and simplified the storage configuration for our Linux customers.

The following is an engineer from the Linux design team of Shyam Iyer-Dell.

Storage configuration is a tedious, time-consuming, and complex procedure, and Dell has been working with operating system partners to simplify this process. At the 2009 RedHat summit, we released a new architecture that simplifies storage configuration through industry-standard iSCSI and iSNS protocols. On RHEL6, we finally completed this architecture, bringing new ways to simplify storage configuration for our Linux customers.

With this implementation, administrators can easily configure or remove storage from the iSCSI SAN, and The iSCSI initiator will automatically register/unregister the storage LUN. If you are running a direct iSCSI Session from a virtual machine in a virtualization workshop, you will find that once the initial configuration is complete, the storage configuration automation will be easy.

The solution implemented can be implemented using the latest RHEL 6 beta following these steps:

RHEL 6 Linux iSNS Server Configuration

Install the isns-utils package
# Yum install isns-utils
# Service isnsd start
# Chkconfig isnsd on

Storage end Configuration

Configure iSCSI SAN to register with the iSNS Server
RHEL 6 iSCSI initiator (host) Configuration

Install the iscsi-initiator-utils package
# Yum install iscsi-initiator-utils
# Service iscsid start
# Chkconfig iscsid on
Create iscsi iface
# Iscsiadm-m iface-o new-I isns_iface
# Iscsiadm-m iface-o opdate-I isns_iface-n iface. transport_name-v tcp
Create an iSNS discoverydb record
# Iscsiadm-m discoverydb-t isns-p : -O new
# Iscsiadm-m discoverydb-t isns-p : -O update-n discovery. isns. use_discoveryd-v Yes
Set the polling interval to detect iSNS servers
# Iscsiadm-m discoverydb-t st-p : -O update-n disval. isns. discoveryd_poll_inval-v 30
Restart iscsid to make the change take effect
# Service iscsid restart
Success! Each time you create/remove a storage LUN from the target, the startup program automatically registers/deregister it.
Of course, you can try to remove the LUN from the SAN when it is in use, but suppose you know what it means to remove the LUN from the SAN. If you want to add storage Luns to the SAN with more automation space on the host end, we hope you will receive more feedback on this solution.

Note: step 1 of the Startup Program configuration is required because the current iSCSI boot program does not allow specific iface-based discovery based on iSNS, and all created iface will be registered/deregistered by the Startup Program.