Finding out the Windows Cluster Size of a Volume
From an administrative command prompt type:
fsutil fsinfo ntfsinfo d: The output will include:
Bytes Per Cluster : 4096 In this case Bytes Per Cluster is 4096.
Disable Disk Signature Writing in Windows
Windows default behaviour is to write to the disk signature of basic disks when they are attached/detected by windows. This can cause merry hell with iscsi volumes, especially those with existing setups. Start diskpart interactively and put in the following:
automount disable Then:
automount scrub The first setting disables automounting and the second resets any past configs for disks that have been previously attached.
Windows 2008 Storage Server Default Password.
I’m not really sure how you are supposed to find this out (apart from google) but after installing, you are presented with a login window without specifying a password. Interesting. Well the password is:
wSS2008! I am lost for words.
Creating a ZFS iSCSI Target
Using a Nexenta VM it is possible to create a 500 TB thin provisioned iSCSI target in three lines:
zpool create zfspool01 raidz c2t0d0 c2t1d0 c2t2d0 zfs create -s -V 500TB zfspool01/share01 zfs set shareiscsi=on zfspool01/share01 In this case the disks c2t0d0, c2t1d0 and c2t2d0 are all dynamic 10 GB virtual disks. This can easily be mounted with the Microsoft iSCSI Initiator for testing; it will be interesting to see how well this plays with ESX…