iscsi advice

[newdamage1]

I'm getting ready to roll out a new lab setup, and need some advice on how to present the space to a windows vm.

Freenas hardware:
SM MBD-X10SL7-F-O
1230V3
16Gb ram
6x 4Tb NAS drives as Raidz2

My current thought is to attach this storage to the windows 2012 box as iscsi for format as ntfs. Its going to be used as media / backup storage. no vmdk's. I've also seen folks mount the storage directly to the host as NFS, but I don't think I want to go that route, it seems like to many layers. But I am open for suggestions and advice is appreciated.

 

[ser_rhaegar]

Why not just present it as a CIFS share? Would be a lot easier than setting up iSCSI if it is just for media and backups.

 

[newdamage1]

Why not just present it as a CIFS share? Would be a lot easier than setting up iSCSI if it is just for media and backups.

This is how I have my current setup (CIFS and DFS). There have been some performance issues, the most annoying of which is the delay on folder listing on large directories (800 folders, ~50k files) it takes several seconds to load. Which in itself is not a problem, just an annoyance that I have not experienced in previous setups with this hardware. However, I would admit this might be related to the current hardware (x2 4800, 8Gb ram, 6 x 2tb raidz2). I do intend on moving my current pool to the new box and test to see before going another route.

I am however still interested in other potential options on presenting this storage.