iSCSI Advice

ncowles · 17th June 2008

Hi,

I've never used iSCSI systems before and have a client that wants to use it. They tell me that it will be able to have multiple folders/storage areas and it is possible to configure different logins to have various access rights as follows:

login1 will have access to all folders
login2 will only have access to folders A and B
logn3 will only have access to folders B and C

Has anyone setup a similar system and if so what hardware/software did you use?

Thanks.

JamesSykes · 17th June 2008

iSCSI is a low level storage system and so it's got nothing to do with logins, files or folders.

Imagine you have a USB hard-drive that you plug into a computer. It appears as a drive on the operating system and you can write files to it as any other drive. iSCSI is simply the cable between the drive and the computer.

Now if you have two servers for example connecting to the same iSCSI target then you can present LUN 1 to server A and LUN 2 to Server B. You can also present the LUN to both servers if you wish.

Soon as you start talking logins, folders or files then you are talking about normal operating system permissions.

JSamuel · 17th June 2008

http://www.proaviouk.com/
What we distribute.

The software we pair the hardware with does support limiting viewable UDVs to certain people, but "permissions" is something best not handled at that level.

(Not Real Hosts)

edb49 · 17th June 2008

iSCSI can have CHAP authentication, so there is the concept of logins.

files/folders are irrelevant as James says.

JamesSykes · 17th June 2008

Quote:

Originally Posted by JSamuel

The software we pair the hardware with does support limiting viewable UDVs to certain people, but "permissions" is something best not handled at that level.

That's what every iSCSI target does

You assign luns to hosts and should be able to set them read or rw for a particular host. Most decent iSCSI targets will let a single LUN be RW to multiple hosts if required.

It's not users, files or folders though, as my first post mentioned it's not iSCSI that does this.

ncowles · 18th June 2008

Thanks for that, I'll try and get a demo unit and do some more testing.

Regards.

LeaUK · 18th June 2008

Don't foget to check if your iSCSI solution supports bonding... ;-)