iSCSI port w/Windows iSCSI initiator dropping
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A client has a ESXi host with a Windows Server 2012 R2 file server on it. From there they used the Microsoft Windows iSCSI initiator to connect to a FreeNAS box. It's been running (much to my surprise) for a while now, but recently started having fits where it would throw a few hundred errors in the event log:
Event 9 "Target did not respond in time for a SCSI request. The CDB is given in the dump data."
Event 27 "Initiator could not find a match for the initiator task tag in the received PDU. Dump data contains the entire iSCSI header."It looks to me like some network issues. Is there any reason to look at anything else?
They have already been told that using the Microsoft Windows iSCSI initiator is a bad idea and are scrambling to build a new server.
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Why build a new server? Backup the data, tear down the windows ISCSI connect delete the NAS data. Then mount it in ESXi and map to the existing server.
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That was my first thought. They already have the server with (18) 4TB drives so they could use local storage and not have to deal w/iSCSI issues.
The last time I worked with this client I discovered that they had jumbo frames enabled for some stuff and not others. It worked until it didn't...
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Aww... Well I'll definitely take local over SAN in most cases.
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So in all the cases where I read of people with similar errors they solved it by dedicating a NIC to iSCSI traffic, which this client hasn't done. The iSCSI devices are on the same LAN, so would be a major effort to set up VLAN and all that end to end.
Putting in a new server with no iSCSI dependency actually seems reasonable at this point.
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@Mike-Davis said in iSCSI port w/Windows iSCSI initiator dropping:
So in all the cases where I read of people with similar errors they solved it by dedicating a NIC to iSCSI traffic, which this client hasn't done. The iSCSI devices are on the same LAN, so would be a major effort to set up VLAN and all that end to end.
Putting in a new server with no iSCSI dependency actually seems reasonable at this point.
Assuming there is only one connection, just direct connect it.
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You might have to mess with the routing table because both adapter would be on the same up range.
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@Dashrender The current windows box is sitting on ESXi, so no direct connect...
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@Mike-Davis said in iSCSI port w/Windows iSCSI initiator dropping:
@Dashrender The current windows box is sitting on ESXi, so no direct connect...
I do this with a drobo.
I created a new network in ESXi, put one NIC in it, put a new virtual NIC in the VM then assigned the IPs...
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If you can change the IP of the SAN, you can do this very easy with no VLANs.
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@Dashrender True. Hadn't thought of not connecting to the switch or just changing the IP on the SAN and managing it from only the server that connects to it. It's late and I'm not feeling very creative...
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Is Free-NAS ever a good idea? I've only ever heard nasty things said about it.
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@art_of_shred said in iSCSI port w/Windows iSCSI initiator dropping:
Is Free-NAS ever a good idea? I've only ever heard nasty things said about it.
Only if you know nothing about building and managing storage is it going to serve a purpose. BSD or Solaris without the added bits would be the preferred route to use ZFS.
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@art_of_shred said in iSCSI port w/Windows iSCSI initiator dropping:
Is Free-NAS ever a good idea? I've only ever heard nasty things said about it.
Not in production. It's not a bad product, but it's kind of a bad idea. Anything you can do with FreeNAS you can do with TrueOS or FreeBSD without the overhead of the FreeNAS web interface.
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@travisdh1 said in iSCSI port w/Windows iSCSI initiator dropping:
@art_of_shred said in iSCSI port w/Windows iSCSI initiator dropping:
Is Free-NAS ever a good idea? I've only ever heard nasty things said about it.
Only if you know nothing about building and managing storage is it going to serve a purpose. BSD or Solaris without the added bits would be the preferred route to use ZFS.
And if you don't know those bits, you should not be running a SAN.
