Windows Server 2012 : File Services and Storage - Configuring iSCSI storage (part 3) - Configuring iSCSI Target Server - Creating iSCSI virtual disks

Once you finish installing the iSCSI Target Server role service using the Add Roles And Feature Wizard, the message in the iSCSI Virtual Disks tile on the iSCSI page of Server Manager changes to indicate that you can now create an iSCSI virtual disk. (See Figure 5.) Creating iSCSI virtual disks is the first step in provisioning iSCSI storage to applications that require or can use block storage.

Figure 5. After installing the iSCSI Target Server role service, you can now create iSCSI virtual disks.

You can create a new iSCSI virtual disk using either Server Manager or Windows PowerShell. To create a new iSCSI virtual disk using Server Manager, do any of the following:

Performing any of these actions will launch the New iSCSI Virtual Disk Wizard, which you can use to create your new iSCSI virtual disk as follows:

At this point, you should review the information on the Confirm Selections page to make sure you don’t need to change anything. Once you are satisfied, click Create to create the new iSCSI virtual disk, create the target (if needed), and assign the disk to the target.

After you create your iSCSI virtual disk and target, you can view and manage them on the iSCSI subpage of the File And Storage Services page of Server Manager as shown in Figure 6.

Figure 6. The new iSCSI target and virtual disk are displayed in Server Manager.

You can also use Windows PowerShell to create new iSCSI virtual disks and iSCSI targets, and to assign iSCSI virtual disks to targets. For example, you can begin by opening a Windows PowerShell console on the iSCSI Target server HOST7 and using the Get-IscsiVirtualDisk cmdlet to display a list of existing iSCSI virtual disks on the server:

PS C:\> Get-IscsiVirtualDisk

ClusterGroupName   :
ComputerName       : HOST7.corp.fabrikam.com
Description        : iSCSI virtual disk for Fabrikam database server
DiskType           : Fixed
HostVolumeId       : {DD1FDED1-3C51-4A33-850A-23C06A555FE5}
LocalMountDeviceId :
OriginalPath       :
ParentPath         :
Path               : X:\iSCSIVirtualDisks\Database.vhd
SerialNumber       : C9EACA53-B17D-4BCF-836B-9EF16867B866
Size               : 161061273600
SnapshotIds        :
Status             : NotConnected
VirtualDiskIndex   : 1795469856

Note that the value of the Path property in the preceding command output is what you would expect based on what you saw earlier in the iSCSI Virtual Disks tile in Figure 6.

Now let’s use the New-IscsiVirtualDisk cmdlet to create a new iSCSI virtual disk that is 50 GBs in size and is backed by a file named data.vhd:

PS C:\> New-IscsiVirtualDisk -Path X:\iSCSIVirtualDisks\data.vhd -Size 50GB

ClusterGroupName   :
ComputerName       : HOST7.corp.fabrikam.com
Description        :
DiskType           : Fixed
HostVolumeId       : {DD1FDED1-3C51-4A33-850A-23C06A555FE5}
LocalMountDeviceId :
OriginalPath       :
ParentPath         :
Path               : X:\iSCSIVirtualDisks\data.vhd
SerialNumber       : A6403147-E3E0-433E-88B4-403549244CB4
Size               : 53687091200
SnapshotIds        :
Status             : NotConnected
VirtualDiskIndex   : 1884425455

Now you can either assign this new iSCSI virtual disk to the existing target you created earlier using Server Manager, or you can create a new target and assign the disk to it. Let’s choose the second approach, but first let’s use the Get-IscsiServerTarget cmdlet to display a list of targets on the iSCSI Target server:

PS C:\> Get-IscsiServerTarget

ChapUserName                :
ClusterGroupName            :
ComputerName                : HOST7.corp.fabrikam.com
Description                 : iSCSI target for use by Fabrikam database server
EnableChap                  : False
EnableReverseChap           : False
EnforceIdleTimeoutDetection : True
FirstBurstLength            : 65536
IdleDuration                : 00:15:00
InitiatorIds                : {Iqn:iqn.1991-05.com.microsoft:host4.corp.fabrikam.com}
LastLogin                   :
LunMappings                 : {TargetName:fabrikam-db;VHD:"X:\iSCSIVirtualDisks\
                              Database.vhd";LUN:0}
MaxBurstLength              : 262144
MaxReceiveDataSegmentLength : 65536
ReceiveBufferCount          : 10
ReverseChapUserName         :
Sessions                    : {}
Status                      : NotConnected
TargetIqn                   : iqn.1991-05.com.microsoft:host7-fabrikam-db-target
TargetName                  : fabrikam-db

Note that the value of the TargetName property in the preceding command output is what you would expect based on what you saw earlier in the iSCSI Targets tile in Figure 6.

Now use the New-IscsiServerTarget cmdlet to create a new target named “fabrikam-data” that will use the same Initiator ID used by our existing fabrikam-db target:

PS C:\> New-IscsiServerTarget -TargetName fabrikam-data `
-InitiatorIds "IQN:iqn.1991-05.com.microsoft:host4.corp.fabrikam.com"

ChapUserName                :
ClusterGroupName            :
ComputerName                : HOST7.corp.fabrikam.com
Description                 :
EnableChap                  : False
EnableReverseChap           : False
EnforceIdleTimeoutDetection : True
FirstBurstLength            : 65536
IdleDuration                : 00:00:00
InitiatorIds                : {Iqn:iqn.1991-05.com.microsoft:host4.corp.fabrikam.com}
LastLogin                   :
LunMappings                 : {}
MaxBurstLength              : 262144
MaxReceiveDataSegmentLength : 65536
ReceiveBufferCount          : 10
ReverseChapUserName         :
Sessions                    : {}
Status                      : NotConnected
TargetIqn                   : iqn.1991-05.com.microsoft:host7-fabrikam-data-target
TargetName                  : fabrikam-data

Note that the LunMappings property in the preceding command indicates that no iSCSI virtual disks have been assigned to this target yet. You can assign your data.vhd virtual disk to your fabrikam-data target by using the Add-IscsiVirtualDiskTargetMapping cmdlet like this:

PS C:\> Add-IscsiVirtualDiskTargetMapping -TargetName fabrikam-data `
-Path X:\iSCSIVirtualDisks\data.vhd

Finally, to verify that the mapping was created, you can use the Get-IScsiServerTarget cmdlet again, like this:

PS C:\> Get-IscsiServerTarget -TargetName fabrikam-data | fl LunMappings

LunMappings: {TargetName:fabrikam-data;VHD:"X:\iSCSIVirtualDisks\data.vhd";LUN:0}