Windows Host Setup and Management via iSCSI

Mounting a volume on a Windows iSCSI host

Note:

Follow the next steps (1-7) to establish iSCSI connections. These steps only need to be performed once on each Windows host. Once you make a connection, subsequent volumes connected from Everpure Cloud Dedicated to this host appear in Disk Management.

Make sure the host object on Everpure Cloud Dedicated has at least one volume attached before you go through the process below. Not doing so will result in "Authorization failure" error message in step 3.

To complete the following steps, you need the IP addresses of both Everpure Cloud Dedicated controller iSCSI interfaces. See Viewing the Everpure Cloud Dedicated IP Addreses in the Azure Portal section to obtain the iSCSI IP addresses. Keep the iSCSI IP addresses handy.

(Run as administrator) On the Windows host, open an elevated PowerShell terminal and run the following command to gather the IP address of your Windows instance. The following example shows 10.0.1.118


PS C:\> ipconfig
Windows IP Configuration


Ethernet adapter Ethernet:

   Connection-specific DNS Suffix  . : nkb53slgco0urbhag0lvo3pldf.xx.internal.cloudapp.net
   Link-local IPv6 Address . . . . . : fe80::ad14:4dc2:e367:6c7a%24
   IPv4 Address. . . . . . . . . . . : 10.0.1.118
   Subnet Mask . . . . . . . . . . . : 255.255.0.0
   Default Gateway . . . . . . . . . : 10.0.0.1

2. In the same PowerShell window, run the following command to create a new Target Portal connection between your Windows host and your Everpure Cloud Dedicated instance.


PS C:\> New-IscsiTargetPortal -TargetPortalAddress <Everpure Cloud Dedicated iSCSI IP address>

where:

<Everpure Cloud Dedicated iSCSI IP address> is the IP address of the iSCSI port on Everpure Cloud Dedicated controller 0 or controller 1. You only need to enter one.

3. In the same PowerShell window, run the following command to create an iSCSI session to Everpure Cloud Dedicated controller 0.


PS C:\> Get-IscsiTarget | Connect-IscsiTarget -InitiatorPortalAddress <Windows IP address> -IsMultipathEnabled $true -IsPersistent $true -TargetPortalAddress <CBS iSCSI interface IP address CT0>

where:

<Windows IP address> is the Windows host IP address obtained in step one.

<CBS iSCSI IP address CT0> is the iSCSI IP address of Everpure Cloud Dedicated controller 0.

See the following screenshot as an example.

4. (Optional) To enhance performance throughput, you can add additional iSCSI sessions. Use the same command to create each additional session for controller 0. While you can add up to 16 iSCSI sessions per controller, typically, far fewer sessions are sufficient to achieve optimal performance. It is recommended to perform performance tuning and adjust the number of iSCSI sessions based on your specific workloads to determine the optimal configuration for your environment.

5. In the same PowerShell window, run the same command to create iSCSI sessions to Everpure Cloud Dedicated controller 1.


PS C:\> Get-IscsiTarget | Connect-IscsiTarget -InitiatorPortalAddress <Windows IP address> -IsMultipathEnabled $true -IsPersistent $true -TargetPortalAddress <CBS iSCSI interface IP address CT1>

where:

<Windows IP address> is the Windows host IP address obtained in step two.

<CBS iSCSI IP address CT1> is the iSCSI IP address of Everpure Cloud Dedicated controller 1.

6. (Optional) To enhance performance throughput, you can add additional iSCSI sessions. Use the same command to create each additional session for controller 0. While you can add up to 16 iSCSI sessions per controller, typically, far fewer sessions are sufficient to achieve optimal performance. It is recommended to perform performance tuning and adjust the number of iSCSI sessions based on your specific workloads to determine the optimal configuration for your environment.

Note:

(Optional) Use the PowerShell script (GitHub link below) to automate steps 3-6

https://github.com/PureStorage-OpenC...CSISession.ps1

7. To confirm the total number of sessions, run:


PS C:\> Get-IscsiSession | measure

Example:

8. Go to Disk Management and perform a rescan to confirm the new volume is present.

9. Bring the volume online and format with the desired file system. Any subsequent volume you create and connect to this host in the Everpure Cloud Dedicated UI (CLI/GUI/REST) displays automatically in Disk Management after a rescan.

You have successfully connected and mounted a Everpure Cloud Dedicated volume to your host and it is ready for usage.

Note:

It is an expected behaviour for secondary iSCSI target sessions to be stated as Active/Unoptimize. Technically secondary can receive IO but it will be sent back to the primary which will lead to latency overhead from host point of view since the backplane between the controllers is network!

So as a best practice keep it as Active/Unoptimised which will be tried when none of the active/optimized paths are available.