[Plugins] iSCSI GUI and ISCSI Target

[ich777]

16 minutes ago, Gobblerpl said:

How does ISCSI perform in terms of data security? If one of the disks in Unraid fails, will I be able to rebuild and remount the ISCSI image?

Like a normal disk, iSCSI is only meant to share a block device or a image over the network, data integrity and maybe redundancy is up to you and how you set it up.

 

Are you using a FileIO image on the Array?

I wouldn't recommend that, instead I would put two disks in the server, share them over iSCSI and create a Storage Pool within Windows, that is way more efficient and would also heavily increase write speeds.

 

You could also use ZFS if you really want too but I would not recommend using a FileIO image on the Array.

[bjunior]

Hi There,

 

My Setup:

MacStudio with 10G ETH in 10Gigs switchports

Running DaemonTools as initiator

 

I've configured a nvme drive as block device. Mapped into a LUN but unfortunately for some reason, I cannot go over 50MB/s. The same nvme, exposed as a smb share, reaches 600MB/s of write speed in the same network.

 

 

Anyone with a similar problem and/or advices to debug this? It seems very very strange using a nvme and getting such low performance.

 

Thanks!

Ben

tower-diagnostics-20240425-2322.zip

[ich777]

On 4/26/2024 at 12:27 AM, bjunior said:

Hi There,

Please see this post:

 

or:

 

or:

 

and many other posts on the last few pages.

 

Please also make sure that you enable write-back not write-through

[Dolphinez]

Hy All 

I Installed unraid on Dell R730xd.

Installed the iscsi target plugin and define IOFILE lun of 450GB.

How can enlarge the lun if I need more space on the lun?

(Didnt find where its been done)

 

Tnx

[Dolphinez]

Hy All

Urgent question (My Production is offline due to changes, and this is one of them):

I ran my Unraid NAS on Dell R730XD and changed to HW raid to use device block instead of FileIO.

My problem is I see the 3 volumes, but I'm unable to add them as storage lun.

Unraid doesn't let me tick just one of them, only the three together, and he gives a wait msg for 2-3 sec and doesn't add them.

I need the help urgently so I can start restore the lost data from my backups.

 

Tnx

Tal

Edited July 9 by Dolphinez

[SimonF]

2 hours ago, Dolphinez said:

Hy All

Urgent question (My Production is offline due to changes, and this is one of them):

I ran my Unraid NAS on Dell R730XD and changed to HW raid to use device block instead of FileIO.

My problem is I see the 3 volumes, but I'm unable to add them as storage lun.

Unraid doesn't let me tick just one of them, only the three together, and he gives a wait msg for 2-3 sec and doesn't add them.

I need the help urgently so I can start restore the lost data from my backups.

 

Tnx

Tal

Including @ich777 I am not an expert on the backends. but you can add them manually.

 

using targetcli example commands below. Do you get any error messages in the diags?

 

example to add a block devices is.

 

targetcli

/backstores/block/ create usb-SanDisk_Cruzer_Blade_00008219071821134638-0:0 /dev/disk/by-id/usb-SanDisk_Cruzer_Blade_00008219071821134638-0:0 readonly=false

/backstores/block/ create blade:vol1 /dev/zvol/blade/vol1 readonly=false

exit

[ich777]

3 hours ago, Dolphinez said:

I need the help urgently so I can start restore the lost data from my backups.

You have to assign them here:

 

You should be always be able to add them as a storage pool here:

[k1netic]

afternoon,

 

This may be impossible but ive created a fileio img on my unraid cache ssd. I dont have a whole drive to use as a block device.

 

How do i manage TRIM in widows 11? At the moment the iscsi disk shows as a HDD in the optimise drives window. If i add then delete a large file the space is not reclaimed on unraid, even after running trim now from the scheduler tool in settings.

 

Am i missing something?

 

Cheers

[SimonF]

23 minutes ago, k1netic said:

afternoon,

 

This may be impossible but ive created a fileio img on my unraid cache ssd. I dont have a whole drive to use as a block device.

 

How do i manage TRIM in widows 11? At the moment the iscsi disk shows as a HDD in the optimise drives window. If i add then delete a large file the space is not reclaimed on unraid, even after running trim now from the scheduler tool in settings.

 

Am i missing something?

 

Cheers

Is the Windows 11 a vm?

[SimonF]

53 minutes ago, k1netic said:

afternoon,

 

This may be impossible but ive created a fileio img on my unraid cache ssd. I dont have a whole drive to use as a block device.

 

How do i manage TRIM in widows 11? At the moment the iscsi disk shows as a HDD in the optimise drives window. If i add then delete a large file the space is not reclaimed on unraid, even after running trim now from the scheduler tool in settings.

 

Am i missing something?

 

Cheers

Looks like it can be set in the config. But I dont think can be done by the gui. targetcli is the config tool. Not sure if they can be changed once created.

 

Backstore Tweaks

After creating your backstore, there are a couple settings to change, so run the following:
cd /backstores/block/iscsi-hafxb/ if you followed the zvol directions.
cd /backstores/fileio/disk1 if you followed the fileio directions.

set attribute block_size=4096
set attribute emulate_tpu=1
set attribute is_nonrot=1

The block size could arguably be higher for a Steam drive, but this backend doesn’t seem to support any more. This should match the volblocksize of your zvol, and is why I picked 4096 for the zvol.

emulate_tpu=1 enables the UNMAP command which is functionally similar to TRIM for SSDs. This is good to enable even for HDD zpools/filesystems because it also allows you to reclaim the space from deleted files in your iSCSI drive. This is especially important for zvols created with the -s flag (which is not recommended by Oracle, please see above).

is_nonrot specifies whether the pool is composed of HDDs or SSDs. Windows uses this to decide whether or not to make the iSCSI drive defragmentable. With ZFS, even if you are using HDDs, chances are you do NOT want this enabled.

[k1netic]

41 minutes ago, SimonF said:

Is the Windows 11 a vm?

 

25 minutes ago, SimonF said:

Looks like it can be set in the config. But I dont think can be done by the gui. targetcli is the config tool.

 

Backstore Tweaks

After creating your backstore, there are a couple settings to change, so run the following:
cd /backstores/block/iscsi-hafxb/ if you followed the zvol directions.
cd /backstores/fileio/disk1 if you followed the fileio directions.

set attribute block_size=4096
set attribute emulate_tpu=1
set attribute is_nonrot=1

The block size could arguably be higher for a Steam drive, but this backend doesn’t seem to support any more. This should match the volblocksize of your zvol, and is why I picked 4096 for the zvol.

emulate_tpu=1 enables the UNMAP command which is functionally similar to TRIM for SSDs. This is good to enable even for HDD zpools/filesystems because it also allows you to reclaim the space from deleted files in your iSCSI drive. This is especially important for zvols created with the -s flag (which is not recommended by Oracle, please see above).

is_nonrot specifies whether the pool is composed of HDDs or SSDs. Windows uses this to decide whether or not to make the iSCSI drive defragmentable. With ZFS, even if you are using HDDs, chances are you do NOT want this enabled.

thanks for the reply, its not a VM , its a bare metal pc on the local network in need of a steam drive.

I created a fileio img so i assume thats why the block_size command fails?

 

Ill reboot the pc and see if windows see it as thin provisioned or as an ssd.

 

 

Edited July 19 by k1netic

[k1netic]

those commands were the answer, thank you very much. I am getting the full speed my network can provide so i wasnt looking forward to going back to smb shares again.

 

 

[bar1]

Hi, I accidentally created an Iscsi fileio.img in the wrong storage location is it possible to simply copy it somewhere else?

How do I reference unraid to see it?

[SimonF]

44 minutes ago, bar1 said:

Hi, I accidentally created an Iscsi fileio.img in the wrong storage location is it possible to simply copy it somewhere else?

How do I reference unraid to see it?

Yes you can copy as it is just a file. You can create a new fileio block device. What is the output of the config?

[bar1]

4 minutes ago, SimonF said:

Yes you can copy as it is just a file. You can create a new fileio block device. What is the output of the config?

But how to I reference it?

 

or I can copy it and create a new target?

[SimonF]

55 minutes ago, bar1 said:

But how to I reference it?

 

or I can copy it and create a new target?

What does your config look like?

[bar1]

 

Is this enough?

I am just being super careful with sharing my ISCSI information online.

 

I just want to move those to a bigger drive ->done

But how can I reference them?

[SimonF]

21 hours ago, bar1 said:

 

Is this enough?

I am just being super careful with sharing my ISCSI information online.

 

I just want to move those to a bigger drive ->done

But how can I reference them?

Its difficult to understand how you have them connected by you should be able to add new mappings to targets.