Windows freeze when using Thecus N7700 Pro iSCSI

I have 2 Thecus N7700 Pro with ST31500541AS disks. The Thecus are used as iSCSI devices. One with a 4 Tb partition and the other of 8 Tb
I use StarPort iSCSI initiator v.4.2 instead of MS iSCSI initiator because it can handle larger partition size. The server is a Windows 2003 Server.

When I write to a Thecus the system freeze without any warning or message. I can just reboot the server.
When I read from the Thecus the system stops responding during the read, but it becomes useable after the read.
These problems occurs on the 2 N7700 !

On the same server, I also have a Thecus N5200 used as a iSCSI device with a partition size of 3,8 Tb and it works OK.

What are the recomendations about RAID slice size, iSCSI block size, partition block size and partitions size?

I used many Thecus N5200 with iSCSI with success. Is there is a problem with iSCSI on the N7700 Pro ? The firmware is v.3.00.08.10. I received the Thecus with this firmware.

I opened a ticket with Thecus 2 days ago but I received no answers yet ...


Thanks.

I have no solution, but wanted to add a smilar concern.

I have a similar issue with the N7700 which I'm having a hard time figuring the root cause. I have a Win2008 server with two NICS (Intel CT). One NIC is connected to my switch on the 192.168.1.x subnet along with my N7700 whose 'WAN' adapter is also on the 192.168.1.x subnet. My other NIC is on the same subnet as the N7700 'LAN' adapter, i.e. 192.168.2.x which even runs on a separate switch. My server uses Microsoft iSCSI initiator and connects to two iSCSI targets on the N7700 on the 192.168.2.x subnet.

My server will hang if I start copying/moving large files across both targets (locally mapped to M: and N: drives) and try to read/write other files at the same time. I also get the same issue when using StarPort iSCSI initiator. The weird thing is that the N7700 seems ok, but the server complains about iSCSI issues in the Event Log. At some point, I must always hard reset the server.

I get such event IDs as:
Event Source: iScsiPrt, 129
[The description for Event ID 129 from source iScsiPrt cannot be found...]

Event Source: iScsiPrt, 39
Initiator sent a task management command to reset the target. The target name is given in the dump data.

Event Source: iScsiPrt, 20
Connection to the target was lost. The initiator will attempt to retry the connection.

Event Source: iScsiPrt, 49
Target failed to respond in time to a Task Management request.

Event Source: iScsiPrt, 7
The initiator could not send an iSCSI PDU. Error status is given in the dump data.

Event Source: iScsiPrt, 9
Target did not respond in time for a SCSI request. The CDB is given in the dump data.

Event Source: iScsiPrt, 27
Initiator could not find a match for the initiator task tag in the received PDU. Dump data contains the entire iSCSI header.


Hard to say where is the issue. The NICs? The TCP parameters (below)? The N7700? Other hardware such as motherboard or RAM? When only using one target, I have no problem at all. As soon as I add another target and start read/writes across both targets, I get issues.

TCP Global Parameters
----------------------------------------------
Receive-Side Scaling State : enabled
Chimney Offload State : disabled
Receive Window Auto-Tuning Level : normal
Add-On Congestion Control Provider : ctcp
ECN Capability : disabled
RFC 1323 Timestamps : disabled

Hope somebody can shed some light on this. I will be submitting a ticket as well.

My configuration is very similar to yours. I also have 2 NICs on my server one for the client LAN and the others for the Thecus.

I have more details about my problems :
- My Thecus N7700 does not works with Starport iSCSI initiator : the server hangs
- My Thecus N5200 does not works with Microsft iSCSI initiator : the disks is seen as not formated

So I have installed microsft iSCSI initiator on my server for the Thecus N7700 and Starport iSCSI initiator on anither server for the Thecus N5200.
I will move the data from the N5200 to the N7700, then I will rebuld the RAID and the partition on the N5200 and will try to make it works with Microsft iSCSI initiator.

This is strange, I do not understand why I have these issues ...

Hi Pleige,

The problem is FW 3.X. It looks nicer but it's crap :) I had excatly the same problem.
My problem started when I upgraded from V2 to V3. Whenever I transfer large amounts of data, my NAS (N7700 Pro) hangs.

Fortunatley I've found a 'howto' to downgrade back to the previous version.
I don't have the orignal link anymore but I do have the files needed to perform the downgrade.

It worked for me, after 3 frustating days, searching for the problem....

Let me know if you still need it

Regards

Johan

Hi,
Thank you for your advice.
I resolved my problem by using 2 servers one with Starport Iscsi and N5200 another one with Microsoft Iscsi for the N7700 Pro. Then I transfered the data fron the N5200 to the N7700.
later, I will to reformat the N5200 and use it with Microsoft iSCSI initiator on the 1st server and switch off the second server