NAS Too Slow? Try iSCSI

[brossyg]

In response to your article about using iSCSI to speed things up, I have a question.

I have a SOHO wired network. I presently host a MS Access DB on a drive volume "P:" on one of the computers on the netork (Win XP). The "P:" drive is deidicated to the database. I open and transact with that DB from another computer on the network (Win 7 64-bit).

Now, per your article, is there a way to format the P: drive volume as iSCSI, therefore speeding up the packets of data going to/from the DB?

Secondly, I also have a Qnap TS-469 PRO on the network. (I can transact with DB files that have been backed up to the Qnap with no problem) Would it be advantageous to create an iSCSI volume on the Qnap and host the DB from there?

Or, does iSCSI make any difference at all in this particular application?

Thanks.

 

[thiggins]

I have a SOHO wired network. I presently host a MS Access DB on a drive volume "P:" on one of the computers on the netork (Win XP). The "P:" drive is deidicated to the database. I open and transact with that DB from another computer on the network (Win 7 64-bit).

Now, per your article, is there a way to format the P: drive volume as iSCSI, therefore speeding up the packets of data going to/from the DB?

You can't change a current volume from SMB/NFS/AFP to iSCSI. You need to create a new iSCSI volume from unused space on the NAS and move your data to it.
But, I don't know if XP supports the creation of an iSCSI target at all.

Well, the QNAP for sure supports creating iSCSI targets and LUNs and Win 7 supports an iSCSI initiator. So it would be the easiest way to try this out.

Remember, the iSCSI LUN acts like an attached drive. The only way you could share it would be to share it via Windows.

And iSCSI doesn't guarantee improved performance. You have to try it and benchmark it to know for sure.

 

[brossyg]

Thanks ... I will try it.

 

[stevech]

Isn't iSCSI, by its nature, speed-limited by the network(s), as are SATA drives?
iSCSI, I thought, was for connectivity/flexibility, not performance.

 

[thiggins]

Isn't iSCSI, by its nature, speed-limited by the network(s), as are SATA drives?
iSCSI, I thought, was for connectivity/flexibility, not performance.

Sure. But the point is that its lower overhead when handling small file sizes can provide higher performance than SMB.
You are not going to exceed 125 MB/s with a Gigabit connection. But who wouldn't like to go from 12 MBs to even 20 MB/s without spending anything?

 

[stevech]

Lower overhead for small files because iSCSI is disk I/O allocation block oriented rather than file oriented, I understand.

I tried iSCSI from my synology to a windows 7 Pro machine across the internet. I could not understand how the 7 Pro was supposed to support iSCSI; perhas only Windows Server supports it.

I did get it to work to Amazon AWS from the Synology NAS.
But after 3 months or so, I decided that my home user budget couldn't justify AWS - and they are near the top cost for $ per GB. So I'm back to just using three copies of each important file and one copy of backups such as the DSM Time Backup (time machine). This, after trying 6 or so different on-line backup services - all were unacceptable.

 

[DavidB]

Even though I was able to create an 8 TB iSCSI LUN on the QNAP, Windows 7 would only let me access 2 TB of it. I couldn't even format the remaining 6 TB into another volume.

Convert the iSCSI "disk" from Partition Style of MBR to GPT.