iSCSI Windows Issues

[acprogrammer]

I'm running TrueNAS Scale, 22.02.4, latest update. I am making iSCSI shares, using ZFS zvols. No authentication. Basically following Craft Computing's (on YouTube) ISCSI tutorial. I can connect to the iSCSI share in Windows just fine, but when I try to initialize the disk in Windows 10 (multiple machines and VMs), disk management just says

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Disk Management
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The operation failed to complete because the Disk Management console view is not up-to-date. Refresh the view by using the refresh task. If the problem persists close the Disk Management console, then restart Disk Management or restart the computer.
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OK
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That's not a very helpful error message. And yes, trying to refresh the view does nothing other than giving the same error when I try to initialize the disk again. Any ideas? The TrueNAS setup makes sense - I can't see what I might be doing wrong there. And the Windows steps are straightforward and I do connect the iSCSI share just fine. Any hints or ideas? Is there a log somewhere that might be helpful?

 

[NugentS]

Are you trying to share an iSCSI zvol to multiple windows machines?

 

[acprogrammer]

Short version: no.
Long version: I have a pool (dedup on) with three zvols under it. Each of those zvols has a iSCSI share, each with it's own separate portal, on separate, consecutively numbered ports. Each Windows client will have it's own dedicated iSCSI share (and zvol). I don't even have multiple copies of Windows trying to access any of this. This problem is occurring when I connect the first client and try to set things up.

 

[NugentS]

OK - fair enough - I just interpreted your post wrongly then.

Can you post your hardware please - as per forum rules

 

[acprogrammer]

Motherboard: Asus X99-A
CPU: Intel Core i7-5960X
RAM: 24GB
HDDs: 1x WD Green SN350 1TB, 1x ST1000DM003
HDD controller: NVMe, on motherboard controller
Network cards: Intel I218-V

This is running inside a Proxmox VM (Version 7.2). System specs for the VM are:
CPU: 2 cores, same as host
RAM: 4GB
HDDs (VirtIO SCSI disks): 32GB TrueNAS install, 700GB disk from NVMe drive, 900GB disk from HDD
Network card: VirtIO

The iSCSI shares I'm trying to do are off the NVMe disk. I also setup, from the HDD, a SMB share. That works fine.

 

[jgreco]

This is running inside a Proxmox VM (Version 7.2). System specs for the VM are:
CPU: 2 cores, same as host

CPU cores="same as host" will lead to issues when there isn't an appropriate timeslot available. You will simply lose and not run.

RAM: 4GB

For the TrueNAS VM?!? This is not expected to work at all. Please see the following article.

The path to success for block storage

It seems like I haven't written a sticky for awhile, but just in the last week I've had to cover this topic several times. ZFS does two different things very well. One is storage of large sequentially-written files, such as archives, logs, or data files, where the file does not have the middle...

www.truenas.com

 

[acprogrammer]

CPU cores="same as host" will lead to issues when there isn't an appropriate timeslot available. You will simply lose and not run.



For the TrueNAS VM?!? This is not expected to work at all. Please see the following article.

The path to success for block storage

It seems like I haven't written a sticky for awhile, but just in the last week I've had to cover this topic several times. ZFS does two different things very well. One is storage of large sequentially-written files, such as archives, logs, or data files, where the file does not have the middle...

www.truenas.com

Am i7- 5960x is an 8 core, 16 thread CPU. The "same as host" comment is what make and model of CPU Proxmox should emulate. None of my VMs get more than 4 cores each. Technically I'm over provisioned (at least from a physical core perspective), but it's unlikely everything is going to want all CPU cores all the time. Not in this application anyway.

I get that I need RAM for caching, but 64GB seems really excessive for a home lab server just running a couple of VMs. The whole machine I'm running this on doesn't even have that. Besides that doesn't really seem like it would cause the sorts of problems I'm seeing here. Seems like that would just cause worse performance, not Windows can't write the partition table. I'm OK with less than ideal performance. Also, the iSCSI block devices are only for bulk storage. The VM boot drives are dedicated volumes on Proxmox and don't run from TrueNAS. TrueNAS is mostly there for dedup on some the large files that I'm sharing between VMs.

 

[NugentS]

Dear god, you are trying to run dedup on 4GB RAM?
I am not expecting this TN Server to work at all, so anything that does work is a bonus.

I was going to set up an iscsi zvol and access it via windows and then checking your settings - but I am not even interested in trying now

 

[acprogrammer]

If I were trying to dedup dozens of TB (like most people), I'd totally agree. But this is only 700GB of data. From what I read, 1-2GB of RAM should be sufficient for dedup for this amount of storage. My suspicion is that there is either a bug in TrueNAS or Windows or some stupid checkbox somewhere or permission I didn't set right (that every tutorial I've ever seen is failing to tell me about). It looks like I'm not the only one to have encountered something like this. This post has a very similar error (though I don't get "The media is write protected", but I also don't need to clear the read only flag - it's already cleared in diskpart): https://www.truenas.com/community/t...otect-the-operation-failed-to-complete.93924/

As far as failing to work due to insufficient memory, I let TrueNAS have 4GB to work with. Proxmox reports the TrueNAS VM is only using 2GB. I seriously doubt this is a memory issue. That's not to say memory might not become an issue once I start using it heavily. But at least right now, TrueNAS seems pretty happy.

 

[Andrey.Andreev]

Hello. I decided to write here as more suitable topic.
I have a problem with TrueNas Scale and ISCSI drive on Windows.
I can't change volume size on Windows. When I change the size zvol, then rescan disk drive in drive management, i see old disk size.
For testing i create new ISCSI drive with 5GB and connect this drive to windows machine, all ok. After that I add 10GB to ZVOL and rescan Windows Disk Drive and iscsi disk size without changes. I try to recconect iscsi drive, try to add comment to zvol - no luсk. Maybe restart Truenas - is the best choise, but i can't do that. (And i can't restart ISCSI service, because it's use). I hope for your help.