Ceph iSCSI Gateway¶
The iSCSI gateway is integrating Ceph Storage with the iSCSI standard to provide a Highly Available (HA) iSCSI target that exports RADOS Block Device (RBD) images as SCSI disks. The iSCSI protocol allows clients (initiators) to send SCSI commands to SCSI storage devices (targets) over a TCP/IP network. This allows for heterogeneous clients, such as Microsoft Windows, to access the Ceph Storage cluster.
Each iSCSI gateway runs the Linux IO target kernel subsystem (LIO) to provide the iSCSI protocol support. LIO utilizes a userspace passthrough (TCMU) to interact with Ceph’s librbd library and expose RBD images to iSCSI clients. With Ceph’s iSCSI gateway you can effectively run a fully integrated block-storage infrastructure with all the features and benefits of a conventional Storage Area Network (SAN).
