Porticor provides a fully standard iSCSI interface, so our protected volumes can be used from any operating system. Windows 7 comes with an iSCSI initiator (and so does Windows 2008 Server), and this article explains how to connect to the iSCSI volume and prepare it for use on Windows. Windows 2003 Server is also an option, however the GUI is somewhat different.
We present the simplest usage possible, just a single NTFS volume. Much more complex deployments are also possible, such as various RAID flavors.
First, start the iSCSI Initiator from the Start menu:
Enter the IP address or the DNS name of the Porticor appliance into the Target text box, and press Quick Connect.
Windows will now connect to the appliance, and will discover all the iSCSI volumes that it exposes.
Make sure that the relevant volume is listed on the Favorites tab, to ensure that Windows reconnects to it upon reboot.
Windows is now connected to the volume. However this is a raw, unintialized volume. You need to partition and format it before it can be used.
So, press the Start button and enter Disk Management. Select the Create and Format Hard Disk Partitions application.
As soon as you open the application, you will see a pop-up that suggests to format the master boot record of the new disk. Press OK.
The application lists the existing disks, as well as your new one, which is marked “unallocated”.
Next, right-click the uninitialized disk, and select an option. For example, “simple volume”. This will open a simple wizard, and will format a simple NTFS (or FAT32) volume.
When the wizard is done, the new disk will appear like this:
