The iSCSI-R3 Enterprise is a USB module not IDE, so make sure the motherboard has this USB pins available (we ship with an Internal USB cable though).
Your hardware setup looks good to start with for your RAID controller, CPU and RAM (start with 4GB). We have new drivers for the 3Ware so either choice is yours or contact 3Ware to see what they would recommend for growth capacity as this is called migrating. After migrating you need to go into the Console screen in Extended tools CTRL + ALT + X then use the PV Resizing tool. Then go to the Volume Manager (please read the manual for this topic) - then add additional space to your iSCSI volume. You will have to restart the Target Volume so the client will see the added space.
You will need to setup an iSCSI Target for each client as we do not support multiple initiators connecting to the same Target.
There is no setting for an idle shutdown for a mounted volume outside of just removing the Target from the Target Manager then enabling when you need to.
When Snapshot is scheduled to run it is exported via iSCSI and will be visible as new
drive which you shouldn't format. So if you have deleted data then copy from the Snapshot.
When a snapshot is taken the whole data is frozen on your local volume
and any changes you made are written in a Snapshot volume.
When it is fulfilled, the end time taken from schedule is reached, or the
Snapshot is manually closed the changes are committed.
Snapshot uses copy-on-write function to do this and is not continues. General rule for sizing the Snapshot is based on that amount of changes you believe will take place then times 3 for the Snapshot volume size. For example if you will have 50GB of changes then your Snapshot should be 150GB or more as a general rule.
You can test this to get a better understanding with sample data before committing to operations.
Link below to provide a better understanding of COW "Copy on Write" with our Snapshot. Other then that it is very simple.
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