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Introduction

This technical report documents the configuration procedures for a server running

SUSE Linux Enterprise Server (SLES 11 SP1) with a Dell™ EqualLogic™ PS Series storage

array. The report begins by introducing relevant terminology and detailing the

hardware, software and network configuration used in the development of this report.

Then, two deployment scenarios are discussed: single-path I/O and multi-path I/O.

The next section, titled ‘Server Setup – Pre-requisite Steps’, guides the reader through

configuration of the SLES server to work with a PS Series Array. The final section of the

report titled ‘Procedures – How Do I?” is a cookbook for common storage

administrative tasks. This section covers tasks such as: “how do I add a volume?”; “how

do I delete a volume?” and others.

Terminology

Multipath: technique which provides more than one physical path between a server

system and storage devices. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multipath_I/O

Device Mapper: Linux framework to map one block device onto another. Essential part

of Linux Multipath I/O. For additional information, the reader is referred to

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Device_mapper

Round-Robin: Multipath policy which routes I/O requests, in rotation, to each available

data path.

NIC: Network Interface Controller, a network interface card or Ethernet adapter.

RFC 3270: Internet Standards Track which defines transporting of the SCSI protocol

over a TCP/IP network that allows block access to target devices. This standard is

implemented within the PS Series Array.

iSCSI: Internet Small Computer System Interface, an IP-based storage networking

standard.

iSCSI initiator: The iSCSI client, which runs on the SLES server.

iSCSI target: The iSCSI storage device, in the test configuration this is the PS Series

storage array.

WWID: World Wide Identifier, used to uniquely identify a particular SCSI device (e.g.

iSCSI target).

iqn: iSCSI qualified name, a unique identifier used to identify both iSCSI initiators and

iSCSI target volumes. Here is a sample iSCSI qualified name, for an initiator on a SLES

server:

iqn.1994-05.com.suse:938c6b6da1c2

Here is a sample iSCSI qualified name, for a target volume named ‘slesvol’ on a PS

Series storage array:

iqn.2001-05.com.equallogic:0-8a0906-fdce66602-95e792190014c000-slesvol

SLES 11 SP1: SUSE Linux Enterprise Sever 11 SP1

SLES 11 iSCSI Components