How to Set Up a Solaris Storage Server

Each virtual disk is represented by a ZFS volume. The ZFS volumes are stored in a ZFS pool and accessed by xVM VirtualBox via iSCSI. The management of the ZFS volumes is done by Sun VDI 3.0 and requires ssh root access to the ZFS storage server and a ZFS pool on that ZFS storage server.

A Solaris storage server requires the following preparation:

Steps

Install the operating system.
Install Solaris 10 update 7. The Solaris installer offers you the option to use UFS or ZFS for the root file system. It is recommended that the storage server contains multiple disks and the other disks are exclusively used for the VDI ZFS pools. In that case either of the two choices is fine. If there is only one disk available choose ZFS.
Enable root access.
To enable root access:
1. Edit the file /etc/ssh/sshd_config and change the line PermitRootLogin no to PermitRootLogin yes
2. Restart the SSHD service to implement the changes you made to the sshd_config file:
```
# svcadm restart ssh
```
Create a ZFS pool.
Creating a pool is an optional action. The Solaris installer has already created a pool named 'rpool' if 'ZFS' has been selected during installation. This pool contains the root file systems and can also be used by Sun VDI 3.0. Creating a dedicated pool is recommended to separate the Sun VDI 3.0 data from the OpenSolaris/Solaris file systems.
To create a ZFS pool, use the following command:
```
# zpool create <pool name> <disk1> <disk2> <disk3> ...
```
Enable iSCSI access.
Execute the following CLI command as root on the Solaris storage server:
```
# svcadm enable svc:/system/iscsitgt:default
```