[Guide] How to Install FreeNAS 0.8 on VirtualBox 4

FreeNAS is the best choice to create iSCSI disks and ZFS files systems in local PC with normal hard disk by using virtual machine or physical computer. Sysprobs already published several articles about FreeNAS on VMware and VirtualBox to configure and connect iSCSI disks, test VirtualBox teleportation and even Windows 2008 R2 Failover cluster. The latest 0.8  version is a complete revamped distribution with new features and interface. Version RC3 latest release as of today and this quick guide shows how to install FreeNAS 0.8 on VirtualBox 4.

I have used openfiler and FreeNAS for my virtual storage requirements, somehow I prefer FreeNAS  for easy installation, management and configuration. Recently I published a guide on installing FreeNAS 0.8 beta RC1 on VMware which did not bring any options to create disks or manage, I think that could be a bug in RC1.

Latest version is having all the options to create iSCSI disks, ZFS, edit networks and more. The improved features  in this version are;

A volume importer Better AFP and CIFS configuration Reworked and improved iSCSI support. Support for 6gbps 3Ware RAID controllers (and the command line utility tw_cli for managing them) HTTPS access for the GUI

1) Download the correct ISO from here.

For 32 Bit OS – Download the FreeNAS-8.0-RC3-i386.iso

For 64 Bit OS – Download the FreeNAS-8.0-RC3-amd64.iso

2) Create a new virtual machine in Oracle VirtualBox,

Select Operating System as – BSD and Version is – FreeBSD

3) Allocate memory size ( Minimum 256MB, recommended 512MB) and create a new hard disk. I suggest to create a small hard disk VDI file (2GB) to install OS only, then add few hard disks for the storage purpose later.

4) Now mount the downloaded FreeNAS 0.8 ISO file to CD Drive of virtual machine and start.

5) With this version you can’t run from Live CD without installing to a disk like how we did in earlier 0.7 versions. Start it with default option in first screen.

6) Select the hard disk you want to install OS and press OK.

That’s it, installation should be completed smoothly. Remove the ISO file and restart the FreeNAS virtual machine.

7) Make sure VirtualBox virtual machine’s network configured properly ( NAT, Bridged or Host-only) to communicate with other virtual or physical computers. Then configure the IP address for FreeNAS OS by option 1 in Console Setup screen. Follow the each steps and give a static IP for virtual machine.

Normally if you added one network adapter only, then em0 will be the interface. Give a name for the interface, I have given ‘lan1’ in this example. Type your IP address with subnet mask class, I used second example and mine was 10.10.27.41/24 (Class C network 255.255.255.0).

Now, FreeNAS 0.8 is ready to connect via web browser, make sure your client PC can ping to virtual machine’s new IP.

8.) Open the internet browser and type http://10.10.27.41, User name is ‘admin’ and password is ‘freenas’. This will bring the main page of FreeNAS 0.8 which is totally different from earlier version FreeNAS 0.7.

9) Here is the working FreeNAS 0.8 RC3 inside Oracle VirtualBox as a virtual machine.

Its having really cool and modified features compare to earlier versions. Creating iSCSI disks in FreeNAS 0.8 with VirtualBox and VMware will be interested and useful for learning purpose.  You can expect some more tutorials on this topic in future.

Stay tuned.

[Guide] How to Create iSCSI Storage Disks in FreeNAS 0.8

FreeNAS is a great open source Operating System to make a physical or virtual computer as a full fledged network storage.  That could be easy for testing and learning purpose at your home or office testing lab. The latest version of FreeNAS is having totally different interface to manage and create iSCSI disks than earlier versions. This guide shows how to create iSCSI storage disks in FreeNAS 0.8 and connect from other hosts.

Sysprobs already covered a guide on how to install FreeNAS 0.8 on virtualbox as a virtual machine. This can be used to serve as a iSCSI server for the testing purpose on Network Access Storage (NAS), install Operating Systems in network drives, failover clustering and live migrations etc.

1) Download and install FreeNAS as explained in earlier guide.

2) You must add the second hard disk (or partition) to use as iSCSI storage disk. I have added one more virtual hard disk to my virtualbox virtual machine.

Here we will create two iSCSI disks ( each 4GB) from this 8GB added disk.

3) Add the volume as shown below.

Storage –> Add Volume –> Provide a volume name –> Select the disk you want to add to Volume pool –> File System.

Press Add Volume and make sure its listed in volumes list.

For some reasons, my 8GB disk detected as 6.3GB only. So, we can create 2 iSCSI disks with 3GB size.

4) If you like you can change the ‘Target Global Base Name’ under iSCSI settings. Otherwise, leave with existing example name. I changed as below.

5) Add portal in next step. You can leave the default or provide the IPv4 address of FreeNAS virtual machine. In my case it is 10.10.27.41, so I can add 10.10.27.41:3260 in portal filed, but I left if with default 0 values.

6) Add the Authorized Initiator now. You can go with default option ‘ALL’, if more security is required then insert the particular network in Authorized network, like 10.10.27.0/24

7) Now we need to create Targets, Extends and match them in Associated Targets. We have to repeat the same steps for each iSCSI disks we are going to create.

Create a target first,

Do the same step again for second target, I gave the name ‘disk2’.

8.) Add extends now. ‘Path to the extend’ filed should contain mounted storage name (Created in Step 3) with extended name. I have allocated 3GB as below.

Do it again for second extend because we are creating two iSCSI disks in FreeNAS 0.8. ‘extend2’ is my second name.

9) Go to ‘Associated Targets’ and match the targets and extends we have created earlier.

Repeat the same step again for other targets and extends.

10) We are almost done, but the important part is still pending, which is enabling iSCSI service in FreeNAS 0.8, it was disabled by default. Go to ‘Services’ and Click on OFF to make it ON in iSCSI.

Now your iSCSI storage disks in FreeNAS 0.8 is ready to connect from other hosts. Here are the connected iSCSI disks from my physical host Windows XP.

If you are looking to make Windows 2008 R2 failover cluster by FreeNAS iSCSI disks, then I suggest to read the below guide.

Windows 2008 R2 Failover Cluster with FreeNAS

There are more guides available here at Sysprobs on FreeNAS, VMWare and VirtualBox.

Its really great to have a NAS (Network Access Storage) setup in testing or production environment without buying physical hardware and software.

I’m hoping the final release of FreeNAS 0.8 will not have major interface changes, therefore this guide will be suitable for final release too.

As usual, if this guide is useful and you face any issues on this method, feel free to drop a comment.

SSL and TLS: A Beginners Guide

SANS Institute InfoSec Reading Room SSL and TLS: A Beginners Guide … SSL accelerators are PCI cards sold by several companies (Cisco, Broadcom, etc) to … SANS Institute 2003, Author retains full rights Key fingerprint = AF19 FA27 2F94 998D FDB5 DE3D F8B5 06E4 A169 4E46 Key fingerprint = AF19 FA27 2F94 998D FDB5 DE3D F8B5 06E4 A169 4E46© SANS Institute 2003, As part of the Information Security Reading Room. Author retains full rights. Holly Lynne McKinley GSEC Practical v.1.4b SSL and TLS: A …

Examples of these attacks are: active wiretapping, masquerading and spoofing. These attacks can occur while information is being transmitted through the pathways of the Internet. One way of mitigating a potential attack during a user’s session would be to use a secure communication protocol to encrypt data in transit between the user and the server on which the sensitive information resides. Two of these communication protocols will be explained within this paper: Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) and Transport Layer Security (TLS). Secure Sockets Layer Protocol Definition of SSL SSL is the secure communications protocol of choice for a large part of the Internet community. There are many applications of SSL in existence, since it is capable of securing any transmission over TCP. Secure HTTP, or HTTPS, is a familiar application of SSL in e-commerce or password transactions. (Viega, 10) According to the Internet Draft of the SSL Protocol , the point of the protocol “is to provide privacy and reliability between two communicating applications.” (Freier, 3.) The protocol release further explains that three points combine to provide connection security. These points are: • Privacy - connection through encryption • Identity authentication - identification through certificates, and • Reliability -dependable maintenance of a secure connection through message integrity checking. The current version of SSL is version 3.0, released by Netscape in 1999. The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) has created a similar protocol in an attempt to standardize SSL within the Internet community. This protocol, the Transport Layer Security (TLS) protocol, will be discussed later in this paper. Using a series of nine messages (explained later), the server authenticates itself to a client that is transmitting information. Though it is a good idea for the user to hold a digital certificate, it is not required for the SSL connection to be established. Keep the following scenario in mind, as it shows a common application of SSL: A user without a certificate wishes to check her e-mail on a web-based e-mail system. Since she has requested a secure connection from the e-mail web page, she expects to send her username and password to the e-mail site. The identification of the e-mail server to her current workstation is critical. To the e-mail server though, it is not critical that the user has an identifying certificate on her machine because she can check her e-mail from any computer. For this reason, SSL does not require a client certificate. Other practical applications of SSL communications are found in e-mail and financial transaction communications. Application to a Web System The need to send sensitive information over the Internet is increasing, and so is the necessity to secure information in transit through the Internet. A common application of SSL with a web system is an online store where a client machine is…

Embarcadero DB Optimizer 1.5 SQL Profiler User Guide

embarcadero technologies > embarcadero® db optimizer™ 1.5 sql profiler user guide 1 using profiling … USING PROFILING > RUNNING A PROFILING SESSION EMBARCADERO TECHNOLOGIES > EMBARCADERO® DB OPTIMIZER™ 1.5 SQL PROFILER USER GUIDE 8 •The Events Tab displays information about wait events profiled by the execution process. •The Sessions Tab displays information about sessions profiled by the execution process. •The I/O Tab is Oracle-specific and will not appear in the Top Activity Section unless the data source being profiled is an Oracle platform. This tab displays information about the I/O profiled by the execution process. When you select any item from the Top Activity tabs, details are displayed in the Profiling Details view. Depending on the nature of the Top Activity item that you selected, the tabs that compose the Profiling Details view will change to reflect that item’s specific session information. Note: When right-clicking on a SQL statement in the Top Activity Section in Profiling, if the SQL statement is run by a different user than the user who is running DBO, than the User Mismatch dialog appears, with an example of the following message: “This query was executed by [SOE] and you are currently connected as [system]. We recommend you reconnect as [SOE] to tune the SQL. Would you like to continue anyway?” This message indicates that the statement is being tuned by a user other than the user who originally ran the query, and tables may be missing based on the different schemas. Click OK to run the query, or click Cancel and run tuning under the original user. SQL Tab The Profile editor’s SQL tab shows a representation of all SQL statements that are executing or waiting to execute over the length of the profiling session or within the currently selected graph bars. Statements can be grouped by type by right-clicking the view and selecting Organize > By Type . The following statement types are organized: INSERT , SELECT , DELETE , and UPDATE TIP: Statements are grouped when they differ only by their clause values. This enables the roll-up of SQL statements that only differ by a variable value. For example: select * from emp where empno=1; and select * from emp where empno=2. A ‘+’ symbol appears beside rollup statements. You can click the symbol to expand and view the different statement predicates. Additionally, the SQL tab displays two other groupings: Group Description OTHER Includes all recognized statements other than INSERT, SELECT, UPDATE, and DELETE statements.