Getting an iSCSI Target for the cost of nearly zero

Building a cluster for HA using say Redhat Clustering or Microsoft Cluster Services involves getting a shared storage to act as a quorum as a form of communication between the nodes.

As part of the plan to run some tests on clustering I'll be needing a iSCSI target to act as a quorum slice for the various operating systems that I'll be working on. The problem is, I can't find a spare iSCSI target lying around the workplace. The last Dell MD3000 has been deployed for production. The only option left is to see if I can build an iSCSI target as a VM(of course).

Thanks to Google, I've managed to unearth some articles on how to turn an operating system into a iSCSI target. There are a couple of software avaliable, most of the Windows software are payware while the Linux and Solaris ones are the roll-your-own-for-free options.

No prize for guessing that I chose the free options :)

Solaris : Solaris iSCSI Target

Linux 2.6 kernel: http://iscsitarget.sourceforge.net/


I'm pretty tempted to go for the Solaris iSCSI target.

Time to do some reading.