After upgrading my old QNAP TS-453A to a QNAP TS-873 with 8 bays and tons of storage I finally had some time to explore additional storage options for my homelab. Now with 2 pools of storage with total capacity of ~ 35TiB I finally could start to use my NAS much more efficient.

In the previous post Configure QNAP NFS as VMware ESXi Dastastore I showed you how to configure QNAP NFS share as VMware ESXi Datastore.

In this post I will show you how to create a VMware ESXi datastore using iSCSI.

Prerequisites

• QNAP NAS
• VMware ESXi - mentioned solution should work starting from VMware ESXi 5.0+

QNAP Configuration

1. Login to your QNAP NAS and click iSCSI & Fibre Channel
2. When first time started you will be asked if you wish to go through a configuration wizard. Click Next.
3. We will start with the iSCSI Target creation.
4. You can enter name and alias for your iSCSI Target.
5. In next section we can enter username and password. Only letters and numbers are allowed. Let’s try to configure it with username and password.
6. In the last section we have a summary of the items we configured. Important is to select Create a LUN and map it to this target.
7. Now we are in the Block-Based LUN Creation Wizard section. Choose appropriate Storage Pool and the type of LUN allocation - thick or thin.
8. We need to provide a LUN name and enter the desired LUN size. As I have cache disks I will use them.
9. On the summary we can see all the configured settings.
10. Our QNAP NAS iSCSI target is ready to be used.

ESXi Configuration

VMware ESXi can use iSCSI either using Static or Dynamic discovery. I’ve tested it with both and I will descibre the process just with Dynamic.

1. Login to vSphere.

2. Navigate to your ESXi Server Configure -> Storage Adapaters -> iSCSI Software Adapter or your hardware iSCSI adapter.

3. Click Dynamic Discovery and then Add.

4. Enter iSCSI Server FQDN or IP address.

5. I used CHAP configuration on QNAP so I need to enter it in ESXi as well. Set Authentication Method to Use unidirectioal CHAP if required by target.

6. We need to rescan adapter in order to reflect changes. CLick Rescan Adapter.

7. iSCSI LUN is visible and can be used as VMware Datastore.

Create iSCSI based VMware Datastore

1. Click on Actions and then select Storage -> New Datastore
   
2. Choose VMFS
3. Select our iSCSI backed Disk.
4. Choose desired VMFS version.
5. I will use whole datastore size and use default settings.
6. On the summary page we can review our configured settings.
7. Datastore is visible in GUI and can be used by our VMs.

Summary

I hope that post was informative and easy to follow. I am really happy to have so many options to utilize my QNAP NAS in my homelab.