Build Your Own Cheap iSCSI SAN for ESX Server.
Option #1 – OpenFiler
The first option I have found is OpenFiler. This is an open-source “storage management operating system”. In fact, Openfiler takes the Linux OS and makes it into a SAN controller. It can all be configured with a web browser and, even better, it is a free download. It takes about 10 minutes to install (probably much longer to actually configure). In fact, you can even download a working VMware virtual disk image of OpenFiler. It is promoted on the VMware Virtual Appliance Marketplace but you can also download it from SourceForge.net.
Here is my Openfiler Web management interface:
SAN Melody Lite – Option #2
A company called Datacore creates a number of storage server products that create, what they call, “Server Virtualization”. Their SANMelody software can turn a Windows Server into both a Fibre Channel (FC) and iSCSI SAN Server.
