Microsoft iSCSI Software Initiator Version 2.X Users Guide
Microsoft Corporation
Published: January 2007
Updated: November 2008
Abstract
iSCSI SANs are gaining in popularity as executives increasingly understand their advantages. These include leveraging of existing investments in Ethernet and TCP/IP deployments as well as expertise.
The initial portion of this document is focused upon the IT executive making procurement and deployment decisions. The document describes the advantages of iSCSI and also provides a brief architecture overview. Next, the document describes the availability of iSCSI for various different flavors of Windows and then provides an executive overview of scenarios that work as well as scenarios that are not supported by Microsoft.
The document then changes focus to address the needs of the storage administrator. After a brief technical overview of iSCSI architecture implementation in Windows, the document moves on to describe iSCSI installation, best practices and troubleshooting.
This document is an rtf (rich text format) document that can be viewed without requiring Microsoft Word or the Word Viewer to be installed. The document can be viewed on Windows with Wordpad or with typical rich text readers on non Windows systems.
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Microsoft® Windows® Server 2008 White Paper
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© 2008 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.
Microsoft, Windows, Windows Server and Windows Vista are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Microsoft Corporation in the United States and/or other countries.
The names of actual companies and products mentioned herein may be the trademarks of their respective owners.
Contents
Introduction 7
iSCSI SAN Components 7
iSCSI Client/Host 7
iSCSI Target 8
Native and Heterogeneous IP SANs 8
iSCSI Availability with various different versions of Windows 12
Highlights of the Windows iSCSI implementation 13
What has been tested and determined to work 14
Microsoft Server Cluster (MSCS) 14
Microsoft Exchange 15
Microsoft SQL Server 16
Microsoft File Server shares/DFS 16
Not supported for use with the Microsoft iSCSI Software Initiator: 17
Dynamic disks on Windows Server 2003, Windows XP and Windows 2000 17
NIC Teaming 17
Architectural overview and features 18
Services that depend upon iSCSI devices 19
How the iSCSI Initiator Service Manages Targets 20
Node Names 20
Initiator Instance 21
Discovery mechanisms 21
How targets are organized 21
Installing the iSCSI Initiator 24
Installation on Windows Server 2008 and Windows Vista 24
Installation on Windows Server 2003, Windows XP and Windows 2000 24
Security 29
iSCSI Best Practices 30
Storage Array Performance Best Practices 30
Networking best practices 30
Firewall configuration for Windows 2008 Server Core 32
Using the Microsoft iSCSI Initiator Service on Windows Server 2008 33
Initiator IQN Name 34
Persistent Targets 34
Running automatic start services on iSCSI disks 35
Management applications/Interfaces 35
iSCSI Control Panel Configuration Utility 35
iSCSI Property Pages 35
iSCSICLI 36
WMI 36
Perfmon/Sysmon 38
Using Multipathing I/O 40
Configuring MCS (Multiple Connections) 42
Configuring Microsoft MPIO 54
iSCSI Boot Initiator Architectural Overview 66
iSCSI Boot Step by Step instructions for the Windows Administrator 68
Configure the iSCSI target to be accessible only to one particular client (Step 9 ) 77
Windows Server 2003 Host configuration 82
Configure the Windows Server 2003 host to access the target and check that the Windows Server can successfully access it (Step 10) 83
Configure client to boot from iSCSI target (Step 12) 88
Troubleshooting 89
Multifunction cards 89
Checked Builds 89
Terminal Services on Windows 2000 89
Eventlog 89
Debug Logging 89
Installation 91
Multipathing 93
Addressing Slow Performance with iSCSI clusters 94
Error Recovery 96
Other Areas 98
Appendix A - Event Tracing in MS iSCSI Drivers 100
Appendix B - iSCSI Eventlog messages 102
Microsoft iSCSI Initiator Service 102
Microsoft Software Initiator Kernel Mode Driver 105
Appendix C – iSCSICLI command reference 113
Boot Configuration Known Issues (Windows Server 2003 Boot Initiator) 116
MPIO Failover in an iSCSI boot configuration using the Microsoft iSCSI Software Initiator 116
Appendix D – Microsoft iSCSI Software Initiator Error Messages and Status Codes 139
Appendix E – Integrating iSCSI Support in Windows PE 145
Prerequisites 145
Section to add to Software registry hive (PE_Soft) 147
Section to add to System registry hive (PE_Sys) 147
To create a bootable CD-ROM 151
Test and Validate the completed WinPE2.0 image 152
Appendix F - iSCSI Initiator & MPIO tunable timers 154
The following MPIO timers and timeout values may be used to tune the configuration of MPIO. MPIO Timer Key Values 154
Microsoft iSCSI Initiator Service Timers 156
Microsoft iSNS Timers 159
Microsoft iSCSI Initiator Driver Timers 161
Other Timers 165
References and Resources 167
Microsoft iSCSI Software Initiator 2.x
Users Guide
Published: June 2005
Updated: July 2008
© 2003 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.
Microsoft, Windows, and Windows NT are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Microsoft Corporation in the United States and/or other countries.
Contents 3
Services that depend u...
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