Help with connecting to iSCSI over the internet and openVPN

[cedced]

Hi all,

I'm new to Freenas and I have spent countless hours trying to setup openVPN. I believe this is the secured way to get the iSCSI working over the internet so my local virtual drive can connect to the server (but tell me if I'm wrong).

And basically I can't do anymore with it and need some serious help and guidance to set openVPN up. I use the latest Freenas 9.3.1.

Thanks!

 

[m0nkey_]

This is a pretty ridiculous question. I can give two reasons why this will not work as expected:

• iSCSI clients are not tolerant of latency
• iSCSI clients are not tolerant of fragmented or re-ordered packets

You're better off using SMB, FTP or SSH over OpenVPN, since these protocols can deal with high latency connections.

 

[cedced]

Ah, I was expecting this remark, but thanks anyway m0nkey_ for getting in touch! I've read about the latency issue but I wanted to see it by myself.

Maybe I could give some background on my approach: basically one of the reasons I'm looking to run a nas system is to get more space on my macbook without having to bother with an external hard drive. iSCSI is at the moment the perfect solution I can see, as I can have the hard drive shown on the Mac as being local, and I can open and edit any file for my work at will.

I'm a newbie in this game, but if I'm not wrong, you need to download first the files with FTP. I don't have enough space on the Mac so that's not a solution.

I'm not familiar with SMB and I don't see how SSH over openVPN can act the same way as iSCSI.

If you have any suggestion or tip, I'm listening!

Cheers

 

[m0nkey_]

SMB is the Windows file sharing protocol. Latest versions of OS X favor this over the age old AFP protocol. Once you connect to the VPN, you access it like you would on your LAN. For example, in Finder you could connect to smb://<your_freenas_ip>/share, replacing <your_freenas_ip> and share.

If you're not sure about SMB (aka CIFS), suggest you check out the FreeNAS documentation on the topic at http://doc.freenas.org/9.3/freenas_sharing.html#windows-cifs-shares

 

[cedced]

I've had a quick look at the Freenas video about share/cifs/afp/webdav. I'm going to give it a go.

But then there will still be the question of setting up openVPN on Freenas. And apart from choosing the right solution for managing the files, it's really this point that I'm having a lot of trouble with. I've tried to follow some tutorials but at some point I just loose it. Do you have any help on this?

Shame there's no Freenas app for openVPN.

Thanks

 

[gpsguy]

Perhaps you could install a VPN server on your "router". What make/model do you have for it.

 

[cedced]

I'm based in the UK and got the BT Home Hub 5

 

[cedced]

Although I've tried Amahi and managed to get openVPN to work on it. But it seems so more complex on Freenas

 

[gpsguy]

You could setup a VPN using DD-WRT. At a minimum, you'll probably have to buy another piece of equipment.

I browsed through some threads with a Google search - https://www.google.com/search?q=BT+Home+Hub+5&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8#q=bt+home+hub+5+dd+wrt