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William
Asked: 2010-04-22 08:26:57 +0800 CST

How to use iSCSI inside HyperV VM?

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I have 2 Dell R710 servers (intended to set up HyperV cluster) and a MD3000i SAN set up:

Server1/Server2:

  • NIC 1: connected to company LAN
  • NIC 2: crossover to the other server's NIC 2
  • NIC 3: crossover to iSCSI port of SAN controller 1
  • NIC 4: crossover to iSCSI port of SAN controller 2

I have both servers setup as diskless servers with iSCSI boot from SAN without problem. But how can I access iSCSI from within the VM such that I can set up clustering inbetween the VMs? I can ping from the host to the SAN but found that NIC3/4 cannot be used for virtual network in HyperV? What am I doing wrong?

hyper-v iscsi cluster

2 Answers

  1. When you created the VM you assigned it to a virtual network. That virtual network, when created, was assigned to a physical NIC on the server. The VM can then only access the network(s) available to that physical NIC. My guess is given the NIC config of your hosts, you have the virtual network assigned to NIC 1 and since NIC 1 can't connect to the MD3000i, you're stuck.

    If my assumptions are correct, the solution is to create two more virtual networks in Hyper-V. Assign one to NIC 3 and one to NIC 4. Then add two more NICs to the VM and connect one to each of those virtual networks and configure them with IPs in whatever range you're using for iSCSI.

    If my assumptions are incorrect, post more info.

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  2. I am answering my own question since I finally gave up on diskless setup. Once I installed physical HDs to the servers and install 2008 R2 locally, everything seem to start working as expected and I can use all 4 NICs inside HyperV manager. Perhaps there are some changes made by the BIOS/NIC when the machine is being booted from iSCSI, making them unusable by HyperV.

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