Hi!

 

I've been looking at Unraid as an alternative for my NAS, now that it supports ZFS, and the way TrueNAS Scale is heading.

 

One reason I'm currently running latter currently is that it's Linux based and ships the nvmet-rdma (and nvmet-tcp) module(s) out of the box. With this I can use NVMe-oF, and that via RDMA on my Mellanox ConnectX3 cards. Over on my Windows desktop, I'm using the Starwind NVMe-oF initiator. NVMe-oF is a bit faster than iSCSI over TCP, and even more so when using RDMA (when things are hot in ARC, at least in read, it can almost hold a candle to my Samsung 970 Evo on my current HAS hardware, per Crystal Diskmark).

 

Unraid ships with nvmet (at least per bzImage) but none of the necessary transport modules, other than nvmet-loop. If the modules from the title were included, one could set it up NVMe-oF via either TCP or RDMA.

 

Then I could figure out the plugin stuff and get the Python-based nvmetcli tool into Unraid, to configure things the easy way (instead of echoing into /sys/*).

 

One reason I'm doing it the harder way instead of just iSCSI is maximizing any performance to run games (especially those that stream a lot of data) from a ZVOL over the network.

 

(The best case would be native support with UI and everything, but I figure this isn't going to happen anytime soon, due to demand, initiator availability and everything.)

 

Thanks for considering.

Edited June 30, 20233 yr by Glowtape

Was wondering if you were ever able to get this working?

Looked into it, however decided it was too much effort to get things working, as in drivers compiled and the Python-based config tool as plugin into Unraid.

 

(TBH, this distro is kinda weird to begin with. Being a NAS distro and iSCSI not natively supported.)

14 hours ago, Glowtape said:

(TBH, this distro is kinda weird to begin with. Being a NAS distro and iSCSI not natively supported.)

You can install both iSCSI Target and iSCSI Initiator through the CA App.

On 6/25/2024 at 10:14 AM, ich777 said:

You can install both iSCSI Target and iSCSI Initiator through the CA App.

Bump !
Yeah right but thats not what we need...

modprobe nvmet
modprobe nvmet_tcp

Just wanted to bump this to see if it's being considered at all to at least include the relevant nvme-* and nvmet-* modules in the kernel build? If the modules were included it would allow those who want to experiment with manual configurations to do so, and also make it possible for community members to contribute tooling and gui integration via plugins.

Basically just echoing the statements made by the OP as another interested member here.

7 hours ago, porter83 said:

also make it possible for community members to contribute tooling and gui integration via plugins

I do not understand that statement.

It is absolutely possible for community members to create plugins. Most of them are from the community and not from Limetech.

2 hours ago, ChatNoir said:

I do not understand that statement.

I understand it as "if those modules were included then the community could make plugins around their functionality"

10 hours ago, Kilrah said:

I understand it as "if those modules were included then the community could make plugins around their functionality"

Correct. As it stands right now we would have to develop solutions using a 3rd party or custom compiled kernel that contains the necessary modules