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I currently have a NAS running ZFS on Ubuntu but have recently changed my main windows software to pool local drives using Stablebit DrivePool. I cannot include networked drives in DrivePool unless they are iSCSI and are presented to the windows 10 OS the same way physical disks are. I tried a workaroudn with windows shares mouted as virtual drives using Stablebit Cloud drive, but speed was terrible. I have two PCs with a total of 22 drives between them and would like to be able to pool all the drives together into one large virtual drive in DrivePool. Redundancy is taken care of by SnapRaid and folder level duplication to multiple drives for personal photos and videos.

I have two Emulex 12002 dual Fibre Channel HBA and would like to connect the two PCs together to present the drives from the secondary to the main windows PC so Drivepool and SnapRaid can work their magic. Where I'm stuck is the simplest, free software to attain this. I'm happy with Linux and BSD operating systems, but would also consider Windows 10/Server. Ideally I would like the SAN to not only present iSCSI drives but also be part of a docker swarm with the main windows PC.

Requirements:

  • Main PC runs Windows 10 Pro with SnapRaid and StableBit DrivePool, pooling all storage to the equivilent of Raid5/RaidZ1 (1 drive failure) with additional folder level duplication to 2/3/4 physical drives for specific important files.
  • Both Main PC and Second PC will have an Emulex 12002 dual Fibre Channel HBA installed with an 8GBit fibre link. I need the iSCSI data sent via these rather than the 1GBit NIC. I do not intend to use a Fibre Channel switch, just a private link between the two PCs.
  • Second PC needs to present all drives (except boot SSD) as iSCSI drives to Main PC to work with DrivePool. I would prefer to present the raw drive (acting like passthrough) so the Main PC will manage partioning and fragmentation with an NTFS filesystem.
  • Second PC needs to be able to run docker as part of a docker swarm with Main PC
  • Second PC needs to be headless after initial setup with all management performed remotely through Main PC
  • With the iSCSI drives, I'll be able to upgrade SnapRaid to Raid6/Z2 equivilent or greater (2+ drive failures) and add additional pooled storage via DrivePool
  • I will not be running VMs, only docker for services so I do not want a hypervisor unless this is the easiest way to create an iSCSI target.

Questions:

  • Does iSCSI forward SMART information? Can Stablebit Drive Scanner work with them as though they were localally installed drives.
  • What is the simplest free (GPL/Open Source etc) OS / Software to use to achieve this? I won't consider a propriatory OS unless Windows Server 2019 is a good solution.
  • Can I make an iSCSI target function in the same way as a locally installed drive?
  • Is there a good linux equivilent of StableBit Scanner where SMART information is monitored and drive surfaces are periodically scanned?

I've done a fair amount of googling, but most of the answers I've been finding are based on propriatory SAN hardware rather than the DIY solution I'm after. Help and suggestions very much appreciated! Once I have an idea of the best software/OS to use I'll be able to be much more specific with my google research.

AnimeAi
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2 Answers2

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Q1: Does iSCSI forward SMART information? Can Stablebit Drive Scanner work with them as though they were localally installed drives. What is the simplest free (GPL/Open Source etc) OS / Software to use to achieve this? I won't consider a propriatory OS unless Windows Server 2019 is a good solution.

A1: There are commercial iSCSI targets forwarding all the SCSI traffic to the destination device AS IS, but it's a) rare case, and b) it's a performance issue as single virtual I/O queue is mapped to the short physical device I/O queue. Normally iSCSI targets would pool multiple physical disks into a single virtual LUN to report as iSCSI target so all S.M.A.R.T. commands will end up inside iSCSI target. I'd suggest StarWind iSCSI Target as the best performer. This one can run on top of your Windows box or you can do Linux VM if you run virtualized. I'd suggest NOT to use Windows default iSCSI target as it's really slow, has no HA built-in and is missing from the VMware HCL. If you want Linux default LIO works great.

Q2: Can I make an iSCSI target function in the same way as a locally installed drive? Is there a good linux equivilent of StableBit Scanner where SMART information is monitored and drive surfaces are periodically scanned?

A2: Yes, but not everybody would be happy with that fact. Say ReFS won't work well on top of the SAN volume, so would any file system (BtrFS, ZFS) designed to deal with as small amount of the "middle men" as possible.

BaronSamedi1958
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  • iSCSI is usually passes a LUN on a disk system, so it shows as a single virtual disc, similar to how a RAID controller shows a single disc to the operating system, so no S.M.A.R.T. information is usually passed from the individual discs.
  • Starwind VSAN is a quite common solution on the Windows side of things, they also provide a free version. It's basically a software virtual SAN that runs on a Windows server.
  • iSCSI targets act as physical drives, but the OS is aware of the fact that they aren't really physical drives. So some software might take offence at that, for example ZFS does accept iSCSI targets as disks, but it's not really optimal to run ZFS without access to the physical disks.
  • What are you trying to achieve here? If you want a NAS like functionality from a single machine with a lot of discs, just install FreeNAS on that box and let it take care of SMART monitoring and ZFS pool scrubbing.
BaronSamedi1958
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Stuggi
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