SOLVED Question about iSCSI

[Theapplefuture]

Hello Everybody,

Currently I run a FreeNAS Server with one zpool and shares for macOS (AFP) and Windows (SMB) but I often read about iSCSI and its advantages over SMB.

The first question is, what does iSCSI does better than SMB.
I tried to look it up for myself on the internet but I don’t really understand it.


Second question, would iSCSI be interesting for me or not? I only want to store my movies, pictures, etc. on the server and have access to it on macOS and Windows 10.


Last question (maybe it does not match up with the statement made in the second question) maybe I want to install some Games (from Steam) on my server and run them on my pc. So the question is, is it possible (and with possible I mean from the point of view of what is technically possible and also if I can run my games smoothly or would it be much of a lag) to store them on the NAS but use gpu and Cpu resources from windows to play them?

Greetings.

 

[kdragon75]

The first question is, what does iSCSI does better than SMB.

Block storage. iSCSI is like plugging a hard drive into your motherboard but using IP. You would have to format it with NTFS or Apples file system. It's not for sharing files.

maybe I want to install some Games (from Steam) on my server and run them on my pc. So the question is, is it possible (and with possible I mean from the point of view of what is technically possible and also if I can run my games smoothly or would it be much of a lag) to store them on the NAS but use gpu and Cpu resources from windows to play them?

Sure, if you have 10gbe networking from you rNAS to your PC. This is one case that may require iSCSI as steam may not LET you save game to a SMB share. from a high level, you would setup a zvol and map it to an iSCSI LUN then connect using the microsoft iSCSI initiator service. Once connected, ormat the new "disk" as NTFS and assign a drive letter. Point Steam to the new drive. But I would rather just put an SSD in my desktop as iSCSI is only good for one computer at a time (in most cases, cluster aware file systems are another topic)