Windows iSCSI volume driver¶
Windows Server offers an integrated iSCSI Target service that can be used with OpenStack Block Storage in your stack.
Being entirely a software solution, consider it in particular for mid-sized networks where the costs of a SAN might be excessive.
The Windows iSCSI Block Storage driver works with OpenStack Compute on any hypervisor.
This driver creates volumes backed by fixed-type VHD images on Windows Server 2012 and dynamic-type VHDX on Windows Server 2012 R2 and onwards, stored locally on a user-specified path. The system uses those images as iSCSI disks and exports them through iSCSI targets. Each volume has its own iSCSI target.
The cinder-volume service as well as the required Python components will
be installed directly onto the Windows node.
Prerequisites¶
The Windows iSCSI volume driver depends on the wintarget Windows service.
This will require the iSCSI Target Server Windows feature to be installed.
Note
The Cinder MSI will automatically enable this feature, if available (some minimal Windows versions do not provide it).
You may check the availability of this feature by running the following:
Get-WindowsFeature FS-iSCSITarget-Server
The Windows Server installation requires at least 16 GB of disk space. The volumes hosted by this node will need extra space.
Configuring cinder-volume¶
Below is a configuration sample for using the Windows iSCSI Driver. Append
those options to your already existing cinder.conf file, described at
Install and configure a storage node.
[DEFAULT]
enabled_backends = winiscsi
[winiscsi]
volume_driver = cinder.volume.drivers.windows.iscsi.WindowsISCSIDriver
windows_iscsi_lun_path = C:\iSCSIVirtualDisks
volume_backend_name = winiscsi
# The following config options are optional
#
# use_chap_auth = true
# target_port = 3260
# target_ip_addres = <IP_USED_FOR_ISCSI_TRAFFIC>
# iscsi_secondary_ip_addresses = <SECONDARY_ISCSI_IPS>
# reserved_percentage = 5
The windows_iscsi_lun_path config option specifies the directory in
which VHD backed volumes will be stored.
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