How to Utilize iSCSI fileio with OpenMediaVault 2.x

Posted on 23-Apr-2017 by krylon

OMV (version 2.x) has an iscsitarget plugin available (openmediavault-iscsitarget), however the web interface only supports BlockIO type of targets and I was looking to implement FileIO.

After installing the plugin, it is possible to manually configure the OMV plugin for a fileio target using the  console by following the steps below. I ran into trouble when trying to access this target with ESXi which I cover in a separate article. If you are trying to access an iSCSI target with Microsoft Windows as an initiator, this method may work for you.

  1. Install openmediavault-iscsitarget plugin
  2. Enable the plugin in the web interface and confirm that it is running
  3. Access the console (locally, via ssh, etc.)
  4. Create an image file to hold your data (LUN). For OMV, Shared Folders are located at
    /media/your-volume-uuid/shared-folder-name    . For example, to create a 1TB “thin” image using dd and the count parameter:
    dd if=/dev/zero of=/path/to/your/thinvolume.img bs=1M seek=1048576 count=0
  5. Edit the IET config file using the command:
    nano /etc/iet/ietd.conf
  6. In this configuration file you will need to add your target information. Add the following lines to the bottom of this file, modifying it as appropriate for your configuration.
    Target iqn.yyyy-mm.com.example:hostname.Target-1
            IncomingUser username password
            OutgoingUser
            Lun 0 Path=/path/to/your/thinvolume.img,Type=fileio
            Alias LUN1
  7. Restart iscsi-target with this console command 
    /etc/init.d/iscsitarget restart
  8. Then use this command to confirm it is running 
    /etc/init.d/iscsitarget status
  9. Then try to connect to the ISCSI target running OMV either by IP address or by IQN name.
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