From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Mon Oct 29 13:30:02 2012 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [69.147.83.52]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id B7B8E551 for ; Mon, 29 Oct 2012 13:30:02 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from johnl@iecc.com) Received: from leila.iecc.com (leila6.iecc.com [IPv6:2001:470:1f07:1126:0:4c:6569:6c61]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 445208FC18 for ; Mon, 29 Oct 2012 13:30:02 +0000 (UTC) Received: (qmail 87104 invoked from network); 29 Oct 2012 13:30:01 -0000 Received: from leila.iecc.com (64.57.183.34) by mail1.iecc.com with QMQP; 29 Oct 2012 13:30:01 -0000 DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha256; c=simple; d=iecc.com; h=date:message-id:from:to:subject:mime-version:content-type:content-transfer-encoding:vbr-info; s=508e84d9.xn--btvx9d.k1210; i=johnl@user.iecc.com; bh=Tl+O9QWz77DHWGOX2+GgpXqUK6ZjvltcXtIo/oRFXrY=; b=bKUG4VdIOYr1j9NUV+fJh2Af6/NEfv8/2VfesOQrvKYJQe4Y122WZXRui1KlIwE8KZ8mYAIMLmD2Zjej+j/AWLBWLz8rL13MOrqQ4TOzu3MMZHGATkkwtPC3T8i6I93Ux8u4fy8VDu/vS2DfA+bd5NGazO5pilHgjtDuLNqu6qM= VBR-Info: md=iecc.com; mc=all; mv=dwl.spamhaus.org Date: 29 Oct 2012 13:29:39 -0000 Message-ID: <20121029132939.9540.qmail@joyce.lan> From: "John Levine" To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Freebsd iSCSI client ? Organization: X-Headerized: yes Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.14 Precedence: list List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Mon, 29 Oct 2012 13:30:02 -0000 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