{{ $t('productDocDetail.updateTime') }}: 2025-12-18

Virtual iSCSI disks are primarily used by users with iSCSI storage requirements. The virtual iSCSI disks on HCI are a portion of the space allocated within virtual storage. Through configuration, they can serve as an iSCSI server, essentially functioning as an iSCSI storage device. Other devices, physical machines, or servers can mount the disk via iSCSI. Therefore, virtual storage must be configured before setting up virtual iSCSI.

Prerequisites:

Virtual storage on the HCI platform has been created.

1. When configuring a virtual iSCSI disk, you can choose whether to pre-allocate the size. If pre-allocated, for example, a 100GB disk will occupy 100GB of space on the virtual storage. If "Pre-allocate storage space" is not selected, the storage space will be allocated on demand.

2. The HCI cluster must have virtual storage configured before you can configure virtual iSCSI disks, as virtual iSCSI disks are based on virtual storage.

3. For a 2-node cluster, virtual storage can be configured with virtual iSCSI, but access to virtual iSCSI can only be done through the management interface. For clusters with 3 or more nodes, iSCSI can be accessed via an IP address.

4. In 6.9.0 and later versions, the 2+1 scenario supports configuring access IP and virtual IP pools. The client accesses through the virtual IP. When one of the nodes fails, the virtual IP will drift to another node, realizing iSCSI high availability.

Steps:

Step 1: Global setting. Login to HCI go to Storage > Virtual Storage > iSCSI Services > Global iSCSI Settings. Fill in the information

Step 2: Create iSCSI Services. Go back to Storage > Virtual Storage > iSCSI Services click New. Fill in the following information:

Virtual Datastore: Select virtual storage to provide the virtual iSCSI disks.

Interface: Select interface for external servers to access the interface.

Target IP: External servers can access logical unit numbers (LUNs) via a target IP address. Each clustered node will be assigned an IP address from the virtual IP pool to provide iSCSI service, while servers are scheduled to those nodes via target IP after connecting to iSCSI server. This has the following strengths:

a)No single point of failure: When any node fails, the servers connected through iSCSI service will be scheduled to another node in the cluster.

b)2. Load balancing: Servers are scheduled to an appropriate node to access virtual storage via target IP, ensuring load balancing.

Netmask: Target IP netmask.

IP Pool: An IP address should be assigned to each node of the virtual datastore. For example, if the current datastore has 3 nodes. Please configure at least 3 IP addresses that reside on the same network segment.

Step 3: Create LUNs. Go to Storage > Virtual Storage > iSCSI Virtual Storage > LUNs click New LUN fill in the following fields:

LUN name: The name of the LUN.

Description: The description of the LUN.

Virtual Datastore: The virtual datastore to provide the LUN.

Group: Set the LUN’s Default Group. (can create new group under Storage > Virtual Storage > iSCSI Virtual Storage > LUNs by click New Group)

Storage Policy: Select the storage policy.

Capacity: The LUN size.

Pre-allocating:

a)Pre-allocating improves disk performance but consumes more storage space. If it is not checked, storage space will be allocated as needed.

b)This option cannot be edited after the settings are saved.

c)The capacity of a LUN with pre-allocating enabled can be up to 64 TB.

Accessible To:

Any Client: The LUN can be accessed by any client.

Specified Client: You can restrict which clients are allowed to access the LUN by clicking "Add" to add the IP or IQN of the clients that can access it. You can also check the "Mutual CHAP" option to ensure that only clients authenticated via CHAP can access the LUN.

Concurrent Access: if you checked the Allow multiple servers to access at the same time, you are going to authorize multiple servers to access the LUN. Please make sure read and write access to the LUN is mutually exclusive among servers. For example, if these servers form a clustered file system, only one server has write access at a time, preventing data damage or inconsistency.

After completing the above steps, external servers can now connect to virtual iSCSI.

If the virtual iSCSI space becomes insufficient as the business grows, you can go to Storage > Virtual Storage > LUNs click the More >Expand button to increase the capacity of the virtual iSCSI.