Link 1 iSCSI Target and Volume to many servers

:confused: We have a number of Windows 2000 Enterprise Servers.

We want to link all servers to the same iSCSI target and same Volume across these servers.

The idea is to save files to the volume on one server, but have them readable by all other servers that have access to that volume.

MS Initiator allows me to connect and link a volume, which is displayed in the Disk Management tools in Windows. But subsequent Servers linking to that volume cant access the drive letter, even though it appears in Disk Manager.

Any ideas iSCSI gurus of the world?

:)

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Originally Posted by abroadway

:confused: We have a number of Windows 2000 Enterprise Servers.

We want to link all servers to the same iSCSI target and same Volume across these servers.

The idea is to save files to the volume on one server, but have them readable by all other servers that have access to that volume.

MS Initiator allows me to connect and link a volume, which is displayed in the Disk Management tools in Windows. But subsequent Servers linking to that volume cant access the drive letter, even though it appears in Disk Manager.

Any ideas iSCSI gurus of the world?

:)

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think iscsi as a internal ide cable , could you connect more than 1 computer to the same ide cable , no , so samething for iscsi , 1 computer for 1 read/write connection to 1 volume ,

Great Answer!

-BodegaKid

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Originally Posted by BodegaKid

Great Answer!

-BodegaKid

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Exactly, don't blame Open-E for you choosing the wrong technology for your application.

iSCSI = SAN and is not for file sharing. You have NAS (NFS, CIFS, etc) for that.

(you can of course connect to your iSCSI target with an iSCSI initiator and export it through NFS or CIFS, for example using Open-E DSS)

Hey thanks for the IDE analogy. Great explaination.

As for comments about blaming Open-E for the wrong technology, there wasnt any blaming anyone about anything.
Note the question was around my confusion, which was answered susinctly by vkeven. ;)

Great to see quick and active responses to questions in the forums. The email support via Open-e has been less than impressive.

:)

Concerning your comment about support send me the ticket case number via email so that I can find out and verify this.

Hi Todd,

Thanks for the offer to follow up. I have sent you an email with the details.

:)

abroadway thanks for sending me the email. I sent you a response. At this point we can resolve this off this post as it is not related.

If you setup Cluster File System (such as GFS), you can access single LUN from many different servers.

Hi
I'm actually testing DSS on demo-cd
the fact is that we need this functionnality (access single target from multiples initators) and simply because :
if you use jumbo frame, your scsi network will work 6 times more quiclky than the classical ethernet. so why don t use it? just to have a loosy speed with nfs and so on? it is stupid.

so there are only 3 questions :

- is there a way to format the target volume in GFS using openE? don't see that in the GUI (or I've missed it)
- how do you modify the MTU to use jumbo frame (DSS enterprise seems to support it... but where?)
- do DSS support jumbo frame AND bonding together?

forget about what I told you

the fact was that I kept in mind Iscsi.

but if you use jumbo frames and trunking (bonding), you will serve at the same speed that native iscsi (MTU : 9000) using NFS and so on....

poulperouge

Currently we do not have an option to format a target volume through DSS in GFS.

To change the MTU for Jumbo Frames:
From The console Press CTRL-ALT-W then select Tuning Options -> Jumbo Frames config then select the ethernet card that you want to change.
Please note: your network must be able to support jumbo frames as well.

I have seen instances where Jumbo frames and Bonding have been used at the same time