Adding new iSCSI Volumes

[hfourie]

Hi,

When adding a new iSCSI volume, I get a Warning message saying "These changes require resetting iSCSI connections....etc". Does this mean I have to stop all access to any iSCSI volumes and or shut down all VM's using iSCSI volumes. Surely resetting iSCSI sessions is not a good thing while data is being accessed and there could be a possible data corruption??

I dont remember seeing this with the 1TB Free version. Was this added when iSCSI failover was introduced?

[To-L]

hi hfourie

The messages states that some iSCSI initiators may not recognize the new volume.
and that resetting the iSCSI connection may be required.
In this case it would be better to stop data transfer and reset the iscsi connections
We are working on improving this but, no eta as to when it will be released

[hfourie]

When I create a new iSCSI volume, I get..

"These changes require resetting iSCSI connections.

WARNING! RESETTING ISCSI CONNECTIONS WILL CAUSE A SHORT OUTAGE FOR ALL ISCSI CONNECTIONS. SOME APPLICATIONS WILL HAVE SERIOUS PROBLEMS WITH ISCSI RESETS!

Press OK to reset iSCSI connections or CANCEL to abort,"

if you click cancel, no volume is created. If you click ok, all iscsi sessions are reset, possibly corrupting a file system.

So does this mean that everytime I want to create a new iscsi volume, I have to stop all application and server access to the SAN?

[the_nipper]

This is exactly what I have with my DSS here:

There are around 15 iSCSI targets running. I just create a new iSCSI _volume_ (not yet assigning a target!), I get the warnings about connection reset, and then the current iSCSI initiators get lots problems like

Feb 10 14:01:47 vms-4035 vmkernel: 9:02:24:49.578 cpu4:1104)iSCSI: session 0xb71
2370 to iqn.shoe-2013.vmachines-sb dropped

This was a hangup of VMware ESX iSCSI target, where all vmachines reside. I have to reboot. I found this problem several times.

It is absolutely unacceptable that the creation of a target volume causes running iSCSI connections to fail. Storage software designed for TB of space must be able to handle this without timeouts etc! I can't stop my company every time I need some 100 GB of space.

Regards,

Robert

[budy]

Hmm, I do think that your initiators are to blame then. I am using also multiple targets and my initiators don't seem to have troubles with that.

In fact I would expect an iSCSI initiator to be able to cope with short "outages" and to reconnect to the targets on its own.

Cheers,
budy

[zeki893]

Yes I have the same problem as the_nipper. It is unacceptable to have to shut everything down. When my vm reconnects to the drive it becomes read only mode and requires a restart to become writable again. I have moved to nfs or nas because of this.