On 2012-10-29 17:08, dweimer wrote:
On 2012-10-29 13:51, dweimer wrote:
On 2012-10-29 08:29, John Levine wrote:
I'm trying to set up a freebsd image under vmware, but I need more
disk
space than the vmware hosts offer. So the guy who runs the hosting
place
suggests getting a 1U disk server and using iSCSI over gigabit
Ethernet
so I can build zfs volumes from the iSCSI disks.
Poking around, the reports say that FreeBSD is a pretty good iSCSI
server in such forms as freenas, but a lousy iSCSI client, with the
first problem being that that kludges are required to get iSCSI
volumes mounted early enough in the boot process for ZFS to find
them.
Is this still the case in FreeBSD 9?
I'd rather not use NFS, since the remote disks have mysql
databases,
and mysql and NFS are not friends.
An alternative is to mount the iSCSI under vmware, so zfs sees them
as
normal disks. Anyone tried that?
TIA,
John
I don't have an answer for you at the moment, but I can tell you
that
I just started a new server build this morning with the intent of
using it as an iSCSI client and running ZFS on the drive. In my
case
however its going to be a file server that doesn't have very much
heavy I/O, with the intention of using compression on the ZFS file
set. In my case a script ran after start up to mount the drive
would
work if it fails. I will let you know what I find out, server is in
the middle of a buildworld to get it updated to the p4 release.
Yes you can mount as a drive through VMware and use ZFS just fine, I
have done a lot of recent tests using ZFS as the boot volume under
VMware. This new server will be my first production server to use
what
I have learned from those tests, as its system drive mounted through
VMware (ESX 4.1) and is booting from ZFS. Once the install of the
buildworld is complete I will add a 150G ZFS data set on our HP
Lefthand Networks SAN, run some tests and let you know the outcome
of
them.
Looks like I have some learning to do, system is up and running and
talks to the iscsi volume just fine, however as you mentioned, the
big
problem is mounting the volume at start up. can't find any options
at
all to launch iscontrol at boot. Found an example
/usr/local/etc/rc.d/ script from a mail forum a ways back however it
was setup to use UFS volumes and a secondary fstab file for the iscsi
volumes. I don't see any reason that one can't be made to make use
of
zfs with the volumes set with option canmount=noauto and using an
rc.conf variable to pass which volumes to mount at boot, and umount
at
shutdown to the script.
However, I have some reading to do before I get started, as I haven't
tried to create an rc.d script, and need to get an understanding of
how to properly create one which follows all the proper guidelines,
and allows itself to be a requirement for other scripts. I don't see
any reason it would work successfully to host a MySQL database as the
OP was looking for or a Samba share as I intend to use it as long as
their start up can be set to require the iSCSI start up to run first.
If anyone has already done something similar to this and has some
information to pass on that would be great. I probably won't have
time to even start researching this till Thursday this week
Well I got stuck waiting at work today for a replacement array
controller, and got some time to work on this. This still needs some
work, and I am not sure its the best way to handle it as it does an
export on the zpool at shutdown and import at start up. I also don't
know at this point about other services waiting on it. But I have
verified that a server reboot cleanly dismounts the volumes and a reboot
remounts them.
Things to note, the # BEFORE: line below, that was copied from the old
mailing list thread I found, not sure if that is something real or not.
The ZFS data set I was using was set with option canmount=noauto. the
zpool import/export and zfs mount/umount are just typed in there, it
needs to be broken up and pulled form an rc.conf variable option instead
#!/bin/sh
# PROVIDE: iscsi
# REQUIRE: NETWORKING
# BEFORE: mountcritremote
# KEYWORD: shutdown
. /etc/rc.subr
name=iscsi
start_cmd=iscsi_start
stop_cmd=iscsi_stop
rcvar=iscsi_enable
required_modules=iscsi_initiator:iscsi
iscsi_start() {
${iscsi_command} -c ${iscsi_config} -n ${iscsi_nickname}
sleep 1
zpool import ziscsi
zfs mount ziscsi/storage
}
iscsi_stop() {
zfs umount ziscsi/storage
zpool export ziscsi
killall -HUP ${iscsi_command}
}
load_rc_config $name
: ${iscsi_enable=NO}
: ${iscsi_command=iscontrol}
: ${iscsi_config=/etc/iscsi.conf}
: ${iscsi_nickname=}
run_rc_command $1
Other files information used:
rc.conf:
...
# Enable iscsi
iscsi_enable=YES
iscsi_command=iscontrol
iscsi_nickname=LHMG002
iscsi_config=/etc/iscsi.conf
...
iscsi.conf:
# Globals
port = 3260
InitiatorName = iqn.2005-01.il.ac.huji.cs:testvm.local
LHMG002 {
TargetAddress = 10.31.120.102:3260,1
