VMware integration
VMware integration with Charmed Ceph refers to VMware-based clients (iSCSI initiators) accessing block devices based on Ceph RBD images (iSCSI targets).
iSCSI is a network protocol that provides block-level access to storage devices by carrying SCSI commands over a TCP/IP network. It allows a network host to access central storage resources as if the storage was a locally connected device.
This support is enabled in Charmed Ceph via the ceph-iscsi charm. See the charm README for essential information.
Ceph iSCSI
Begin by accessing the VMware admin web UI.
These instructions were written using VMware ESXi 6.7.0.
Accessing the WMware web UI.
Create a Ceph pool
If desired, create a Ceph pool to back the VMware targets with the ceph-mon charm’s create-pool action. To create one called ‘vmware-iscsi’:
juju run ceph-mon/0 create-pool name=vmware-iscsi
Enable the initiator
From the web UI select the Adapters tab in the Storage context. Click Configure iSCSI and enable iSCSI.
Take a note of the initiator’s name, also called its IQN (iSCSI Qualified Name). Here the IQN we’ll use is iqn.1998-01.com.vmware:node-gadomski-6a5e962a .
Determining the IQN for the initiator.
Create an iSCSI target
With the create-target action create a target for VMware to use. Use the pool that may have been created previously (such as ‘vmware-iscsi’):
juju run ceph-iscsi/0 create-target \
client-initiatorname=iqn.1998-01.com.vmware:node-gadomski-6a5e962a \
client-username=vmwareclient \
client-password=12to16characters \
image-size=5G \
image-name=disk-1 \
pool-name=vmware-iscsi
VMware imposes a policy on credentials. The username should be more than eight characters and the password between twelve and sixteen characters.
Add a target to VMware
Follow the Ceph iSCSI gateway for VMware documentation to use the new target. Use the (CHAP) username and password passed to the create-target action.
At the time of writing, the redundant task of setting the credentials via the ESX CLI is still a necessity. This will require you to enable SSH under Manage > Services > TSM-SSH > Actions (Start).
When finished, under the Devices tab you should see the created target. To make more devices available to VMware simply create more targets (use a different image name and optionally a different image size). You may need to Rescan and Refresh for the new devices to appear.
Clicking on one of the target devices will show its details:
Inspecting target device details.
View targets in Ceph Dashboard
If you’re using the Ceph Dashboard, you’ll need to add a relation to view the added iSCSI targets:
juju integrate ceph-iscsi:admin-access ceph-dashboard:iscsi-dashboard