5 Virtual storage There is a “Passthrough” checkbox in the GUI dialog for configuring the media attached to a storage controller, or you can use the --passthrough option with VBoxManage storageattach see chapter 8.16, VBoxManage storageattach, page 119 for details. Even if pass-through is enabled, unsafe commands, such as updating the drive firmware, will be blocked. Video CD formats are never supported, not even in passthrough mode, and cannot be played from a virtual machine. On Solaris hosts, pass-through requires running VirtualBox with real root permissions due to security measures enforced by the host. 5.10 iSCSI servers iSCSI stands for “Internet SCSI” and is a standard that allows for using 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 “iSCSI initiator”. VirtualBox can transparently present iSCSI remote storage to a virtual machine as a virtual hard disk. The guest operating system will not see any difference between a virtual disk image (VDI file) and an iSCSI target. To achieve this, VirtualBox has an integrated iSCSI initiator. 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 VirtualBox, you must use the command line see chapter 8.16, VBoxManage storageattach, page 119. 82