Very newbie to SAN amd Vmware

[prateek]

Hello everybody,

I am just testing Vmware and starwind software and i have very limited knowledge about these products. I have trouble configuring the SAN .

We are small managed service proividers and recentely we got intel modular server for testing. So we thought why not also test Vmware. So i installed 2 ESX host one version 4.1 (latest) other 3.5 (as i also want to see if i can upgrade from 3.5 to 4 easliy or not, ofcourse all trial version)
Now that i have one pretty old laptop (Dell vostro 1500) which support virtulization (intel VT processor). So i thought now i would make this as Vcenter server. This laptop has 120 GB memory and i have patitioned like 30 GB and 90 GB and i thought i would make 90 GB drive as SAN.

Is it possible to make that 90 GB as SAN?

What i did i installed the trial version of starwind software and went to services and started isci service and set up automatic start (while installation it gave me this instrcution).Than i added my laptop IP itself as host. Than i added the target. Here are the questions:

1) It never asked me which drive to make as SAN ( i want my E drive with 90 GB to be SAN)
2) Also when i go and click on start --> program --> Iscsi initiator in target i find the starwind isci there but is inactive when i click on connect it gives me error as service unavailable.

I am very newbie to all these things i even don't know difference between SAN, ISCSI, . All i know is SAN stands for Storage Area Network which i recentely read in my school.If you guys can even provide me link for configuring this scenario would be great. Meanwhile i will google and will try to understand about SAN etc.
Thank you

[Max (staff)]

In order to make a target out of this partition you'll need to create an image file on it and set it to be 90Gb, then it will be available as a shared storage

[prateek]

Hey Max

Thanks a lot for such a prompt answer. When you say i need crave out an image file, how do i do that . Can i install free version of starwind iscsi initiator to do that?

Thank you

[prateek]

Ok i was able to create image file. However i encountered two errors.
I installed starwind iscsi initiator on the server and tried creating RAID-1 drive. It goes fine till raid disk initialization than throws an error 'driver failure'.

So in this network what i did i attached another laptop and i thought i would carve out image file in this and check. So this time i created RAID-0. At the very end when this time was asking me for two options
a) clearing b) sycronizing. I chose syncronizing as last time i thought i kept clearing checked so that why error might have come (ya i know no logic ). This time it gave me error as one drive is faulty!

What am i missing here?

[prateek]

Error that i always get is

Device description missing

Driver failure

Help please!

[Constantin (staff)]

We recommend to use our iSCSI initiator only for testing or personal use. If you are going to make complete testing I would recommend you to use a trial version of StarWind

[prateek]

Hi Constantin,

I am using trial version of our software.
(isnt the one i should be looking for, also are we allowed to paste links here??)

Thank you

[prateek]

May be i havent registered the software is that the problem is. But in email i never got any trial license or any .swk file

When i trying to load register it won't let me do that.

I feel bit dumb as i am very new to all these things and some one told me creating a virtual San environment is 10 to max 20 minute job!. Is that true?

What am i missing also there are yesterday night when i got free i liitle bit searched in google how to configure starwind and found 3 different different pdf all of them bit different!.

Kindly help

[Constantin (staff)]

Send a note to support@ address, and we`ll make you a demo, will resolve you and teach you all