In the sixth part of the series we will be installing Openfiler storage appliance which we will use to configure iSCSI and NFS storage for the ESXi servers.
You can download the Openfiler appliance ISO from https://www.openfiler.com/
Open VMware Workstation. Go to File menu and select New Virtual Machine
Select Typical and click Next.
Select Use ISO image and browse and select the Openfiler ISO file. Click Next to continue.
Select Linux as the guest Operating System and Other Linux 2.6.x kernel 64-bit as the version. Click Next.
Enter the desired virtual machine name, for example FILER01. Click Next.
Enter the disk size as 40GB, Select Store virtual disk as a single file. Click Next.
Click on Customize Hardware.
Increase the Memory to 1 GB and Processors to 2.
Click on Network Adapter and select Custom. Select VMnet1 (MGMT Zone) virtual network from the drop down menu. We will use this interface to access the web interface in order to manage the appliance.
Click on Add in order to second network adapter which we will use for the storage (iSCSI / NFS) traffic.
Select Network Adapter and click Finish.
Click on Custom and select VMnet2 (iSCSI Storage Zone) virtual network from the drop down menu. We will use this interface to access the shared storage from the ESXi hosts. Click Close.
Click Finish to create the virtual machine.
Power on the virtual machine. The Openfiler installer will boot. Hit the Enter key to start the installation.
Click Next to proceed.
Select the appropriate keyboard layout and click Next.
When asked to initialize the drive, erasing all data, click on Yes.
Leave the default option to Remove all partitions on the selected drive, click Next.
Click Yes to continue.
Select Network Device eth0 and click on Edit.
Click on Manual Configuration and enter the IP address as 10.100.1.22 and prefix as 24. Uncheck Enable IPV6 support. Click OK to continue.
Select Network Device eth1 and click on Edit.
Click on Manual Configuration and enter the IP address as 10.100.2.22 and prefix as 24. Uncheck Enable IPV6 support. Click OK to continue.
Enter the desired hostname, filer01.virtshinobi.local and enter the Gateway as 10.100.1.11, primary DNS as the master domain controller IP address (10.100.1.21) and secondary DNS as the google DNS server IP (8.8.8.8) and click Next.
Select the desired Time Zone and click Next.
Set the root password and click Next.
To begin the installation click Next.
Once installation is done, click on Reboot.
Once the virtual machine reboots you will be greeted with the below window. You can see the URL to access the Web Administration GUI as shown below.
https://10.100.1.22:446
Open the web browser and in the address bar https://10.100.1.22:446/
Enter the default Opefiler credentials as below.
Username: openfiler
Password: password
Note: When you try to access the Openfiler management web interface you will see below error and you will not be able to open the login page. This is because openfiler supports only TLS v1. Modern browsers have disabled the support for TLS v1 and hence the issue. Even though Openfiler is an old project it is still a good choice for home lab environments because it is easy to install and has a very user friendly management interface.
Luckily Nuked88 has come up with a mod as per this git page. https://github.com/Nuked88/openfiler-nossl
Open the above github link in a browser of your choice. Click on Code and then Download ZIP to download the file and extract it.
The solution requires one to overwrite all files maintaining the same permissions in /opt/openfiler folder and then reboot OpenFiler machine.
Open WinSCP, select File protocol as SCP from the dropdown list. For Hostname enter IP address of the openfiler virtual machine i.e. 10.100.1.22, username as root and root password that was set during the installation and click on Login.
On the left hand side navigate to the folder where you have downloaded and extracted the Openfiler No-SSL mod files and on the right hand side navigate to the /opt/openfiler folder as shown below.
Now select the four folders in the left and then drag them to an empty space on the right side window making sure the the Upload 4 files to remote directory shows /opt/openfiler/*.* as the remote directory and click OK.
When asked to owerwrite files select Yes to All.
Reboot the Filer01 virtual machine once done.
Now you should be able to access the Web Administration GUI using the below URL.
Open the web browser and in the address bar http://10.100.1.22:446/
Enter the default Opefiler credentials as below.
Username: openfiler
Password: password
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