iSCSI stands for Internet SCSI and is a standard that supports use of the SCSI protocol over Internet (TCP/IP) connections. Especially with the advent of Gigabit Ethernet, it has become affordable to attach iSCSI storage servers simply as remote hard disks to a computer network. In iSCSI terminology, the server providing storage resources is called an iSCSI target, while the client connecting to the server and accessing its resources is called an iSCSI initiator.

Oracle VM VirtualBox can transparently present iSCSI remote storage to a virtual machine as a virtual hard disk. The guest OS will not see any difference between a virtual disk image (VDI file) and an iSCSI target. To achieve this, Oracle VM VirtualBox has an integrated iSCSI initiator.

Oracle VM VirtualBox's iSCSI support has been developed according to the iSCSI standard and should work with all standard-conforming iSCSI targets. To use an iSCSI target with Oracle VM VirtualBox, you must use the command line. See Section 7.17, “VBoxManage storageattach”.