Creating an ISCSI target on RHEL8 / CentOS8

I recently bought a HP server that has 40T of storage outside of the OS array. I had set it up to act as an iscsi storage target for a couple of vmware hosts I run in my lab. Looking around on the internet I was able to find a lot of information on how to create iscsi targets with fileio, but not many that many that talked about utilizing direct access to block storage.

I am going to describe configuring your iscsi target on a block storage device. I am also assuming that you don’t need to open ports in firewalld or have it disabled.

• locate the device your iscsi storage is on:
  • run: fdisk -l

• Next install the targetcli package:
  • Run: yum install targetcli -y
• Run targetcli

• Create the backstores
  • Run: cd backstores/block

• Run: create dev=/dev/<storage> name=MyStorage

• Running “ls” should show something similar to this:

• Creating the iscsi Targets
  • Run: cd /iscsi

• Create a iscsi target by creating a custom IQN ( many times the format is iqn.YYYY-MM.com.example:targetdescription )
  • Run: create wwn=iqn.2020-01.com.mydomain:svrstorage

• Running ls should show something similar to this:

• Add ACLs for the hosts that will connect
  • Run: cd iqn.2020-10.com.mydomain:svrstorage/tpg1/acls  (using your custome IQN)
  • Create the ACL for the connecting hosts (you must know the IQN of the connecting host)
    • Run: create wwn=iqn.2019-02.com.otherhost:node1

• Running “ls” should show something like this:

• We need to map the LUN to the iscsi target
  • Run cd /iscsi/iqn.2020-10.com.mydomain:svrstorage/tpg1/luns  (the IQN being the remote hosts IQN)
  • Run: create /backstores/block/MyStorage

• Running “ls” should show you something like this

• Verify it all looks right, and exit
  • Run: cd /
  • Run: ls    and verify that your settings appear correct

• If all of your devices and ACLs look correct, type exit to save and quit.

• Start the iscsi target
  • Run: systemctl enable target
    • This will enable the daemon starting each time the server starts up
  • Run: systemctl start target
    • This will start the iscsi target daemon
  • At this point your remote hosts should be able to connect and see the storage you have shared.