iSCSI - Libvirt Datastore

This Datastore is used to register already existing iSCSI volume available to the hypervisor Nodes.

Warning

The Datastore should only be usable by the administrators. Letting users create images in this Datastore is a huge security risk!

Front-end Setup

No additional configuration is needed

Node Setup

The Nodes need to meet the following requirements:

• The devices you want to attach to a VM should be accessible by the hypervisor.

• QEMU needs to be compiled with libiscsi support.

iSCSI CHAP Authentication

In order to use CHAP authentication, you will need to create a libvirt secret in all the hypervisors. Follow this Libvirt Secret XML format guide to register the secret. Take the following into consideration:

• incominguser field on the iSCSI authentication file should match the Datastore’s ISCSI_USER parameter.

• <target> field in the secret XML document will contain the ISCSI_USAGE paremeter.

• Do this in all the hypervisors.

OpenNebula Configuration

Once the Node storage setup is ready, the OpenNebula configuration comprises two steps:

• Create System Datastore

• Create Image Datastore

Create System Datastore

The iSCSI Datastore can work with the following System Datastores:

• NFS/NAS system datastore.

• Local storage system datastore.

Note that the System Datastore is only used for volatile disks and context devices.

Create an Image Datastore

To create an Image Datastore you just need to define the name and set the following:

Attribute	Description
NAME	Name of datastore
TYPE	IMAGE_DS
DS_MAD	iscsi_libvirt
TM_MAD	iscsi_libvirt
DISK_TYPE	ISCSI
ISCSI_HOST	iSCSI Host. Example: host or host:port.

If you need to use CHAP authentication (optional) add the following attributes to the Datastore:

Attribute	Description
ISCSI_USAGE	Usage of the secret with the CHAP Auth string.
ISCSI_USER	user the iSCSI CHAP authentication.

An example template of Datastore:

> cat iscsi.ds
NAME = iscsi

DISK_TYPE = "ISCSI"

DS_MAD = "iscsi_libvirt"
TM_MAD = "iscsi_libvirt"

ISCSI_HOST  = "the_iscsi_host"
ISCSI_USER  = "the_iscsi_user"
ISCSI_USAGE = "the_iscsi_usage"

> onedatastore create iscsi.ds
ID: 101

Warning

Images created in this Datastore should be persistent. Making the images non-persistent allows more than one VM to use this device and will probably cause problems and data corruption.

Datastore Usage

New images can be added like any other image by specifying the path. If you are using the CLI do not use the shorthand parameters as the CLI check if the file exists and the device most probably won’t exist in the Front-end.

As an example here is an image template to add a Node disk iqn.1992-01.com.example:storage:diskarrays-sn-a8675309:

NAME = iscsi_device
PATH = iqn.1992-01.com.example:storage:diskarrays-sn-a8675309
PERSISTENT = YES

Warning

As this Datastore is just a container for existing devices, images does not take any size from it. All devices registered will render a size of 0 and the overall devices Datastore will show up with 1MB of available space

Note

You may override any of the following: ISCSI_HOST, ISCSI_USER`, ISCSI_USAGE and ISCSI_IQN parameters in the image template. These overridden parameters will come into effect for new Virtual Machines.

Here is an example of an iSCSI LUN template that uses the iSCSI transfer manager.

oneadmin@onedv:~/exampletemplates$ more iscsiimage.tpl
NAME=iscsi_device_with_lun
PATH=iqn.2014.01.192.168.50.61:test:7cd2cc1e/0
ISCSI_HOST=192.168.50.61
PERSISTENT=YES

Note the explicit /0 at the end of the IQN target path. This is the iSCSI LUN ID.