KERNSAFE - iSCSI SAN Software and Storage Virtualization

How to configure ESXi to boot via Software iSCSI?

When VMware introduced support for iSCSI, that was back with ESX 3.X release. On that time ESX was only able to boot from if it had hardware iSCSI adapter. Host was unable to boot via VMware iSCSI driver using NIC with special iSCSI capabilities.

It was very easy to spot that there is a need to be able to boot via Software iSCSI. While many VMware partners are developing blade chassis that contain blade server, storage and network interconnects in a single rack. Those blades are usually disk-less, and in many cases have iSCSI storage. The main point here is to off of an iSCSI LUN using NICs with iSCSI capabilities, rather than using dedicated hardware iSCSI initiators.