It has been awhile since I last configured iSCSI on my QNAP TS-251 network attached storage appliance. A lot has changed in a year, including the NAS Operating System known as QTS. The document How to use QNAP NAS as a VMware Datastore via iSCSI was written for vSphere 4.0 and hasn’t yet been updated for vSphere 6.5 so I wanted to provide some simple instructions to help others.
Follow the QNAP instructions How to create and use the iSCSI target service on a QNAP Turbo NAS to create the iSCSI Target Volume. When you are finished it will look similar to this:
Once you have created the iSCSI Target Volume, verify that the iSCSI ACL Default Policy allows Read/Write. You can do this by selecting the iSCSI ACL button, choosing the Default Policy and selecting Edit. Verify that Read/Write access is set to Yes.
Additional iSCSI ACLs are not required when connecting a single host.
CHAP Authentication is not required. However if you wish to enable it select the iSCSI target, then choose the Action drop down menu and select Modify.
Then in vSphere you will need to do the following.
- Create a Single vmkernel adapter for iSCSI – You must use an IP Address that has access to the QNAP NAS.
- Activate the Software iSCSI Adapter
- Setup Static Discovery for iSCSI – When configuring Static Discovery add the IP Address of your QNAP NAS
Its important to remember that you will need to click on the button to rescan the hosts storage adapter to discover newly added storage devices.
