I have been looking around for a low-cost, easy to use, reliable, iSCSI SAN solution for sometime. I was lucky enough to stumbled upon a great Linux open-source application called Openfiler (www.openfiler.com) . Here is a brief description of the product from the company's website:
"Openfiler is a Storage Management Operating System. It is powered by the Linux 2.6 kernel and Open Source applications such as Apache, Samba, LVM2, ext3, Linux NFS and iSCSI Enterprise Target. Openfiler combines these ubiquitous technologies into a small, easy to manage solution fronted by a powerful web-based management interface. Openfiler allows you to build a Network Attached Storage (NAS) and/or Storage Area Network (SAN) appliance, using industry-standard hardware, in less than 10 minutes of installation time."
I am not a Linux savvy user and I have to say that the installation was very simple and straight forward. Administration and configuration is easily done via a web browser from a remote computer using SSL. The interface is simple, yet functional. It does what it is supposed to do.
I will be using Openfiler as an iSCSI SAN Target and using Microsoft's iSCSI Initiator on my Windows 2003 R2 Server to mount SAN volumes. The machine that I am using to run OpenFiler is an IBM NetCentre P4 3GHz, 1GB RAM, and a 250GB Hard drive. I am also running on a Gigabit LAN.
Check back for more on how I am using Openfiler
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