[CentOS] iSCSI + kickstart

Mon Feb 8 12:55:02 UTC 2010
Ugo Bellavance <ugob at lubik.ca>

Hi,

(I'm using RHEL, but I posted on redhat.general and rhel5 mailing lists 
and didn't get an answer, so I'm taking a chance here as well)

Two of my servers have 2 nics (HP DL495c G5).  Using RHEL 5.4, I'd like 
to do a network install to boot from iSCSI, as the NIC supports it, 
following this document:  http://kbase.redhat.com/faq/docs/DOC-6875.

However, since my data network is on a network segment that is separated 
from the SAN (iSCSI) network segment, I'd need to install from pxeboot 
using the LAN VLAN, but configure another nic so that it has access ot 
the SAN VLAN.  From what I can see, it is not possible to assign a vlan 
in kickstart, and kickstart can only configure one NIC using the 
--network parameter.  However, I managed to configure another nic using 
a %pre%.  It also looks impossible to create a bonded interface in 
kickstart, which I'd like to be able to create.  Ideally, I'd like a 
bonded interface in failover mode, and some vlan'd interface on top of 
the bonded interface.  But I could manage that afterwards, I guess.

It looks like only my first physical NIC can boot from the SAN, so 
ideally, I'd need to have a eth0 to be in the SAN segment, and configure 
eth1 for the LAN, so that it can see my dhcp, pxeboot and tftp server.

Then I guess I must change the boot mode of my NIC so that it boots 
using iSCSI instead of PXE (after the install).  But then, will 
multipath be configured?  Since I have two controllers, the lun shows me 
two disks...

If anyone has had experience with this kind of installation, please let 
me know.

Thanks,

Ugo