Network loss with disk activity

[reesewon]

Hello,

I am starting to get frustrated with Freenas. It seems that no matter what, whenever I am using Freenas with VMware, it seems that it stops working when using it for Storage vMotion or large disk activity. This happened for me with my work lab, but that was a long time ago and I can't quite remember the symptoms. However, now, in my home lab it is happening again. It seems that when ever I have large activity on my iSCSI device extent (Intel SRCSASJV RAID 5 with 5 2TB HDDs) the response times go over 200ms and then I lose my network connection. At first I thought it was my nvidia ethernet cards having a bad driver or something, but I put in an Intel Pro 1000GT and that also dropped. Here are the log entries in /var/log/messages when the connection drops:

Apr 17 19:40:50 freenas istgt[5276]: Login from iqn.1998-01.com.vmware:zeal-25569a9e (192.168.0.11) on iqn.2011-03.org.example.istgt:gold-storage LU1 (192.168.0.31:3260,1), ISID=23d000002, TSIH=23, CID=0, HeaderDigest=off, DataDigest=off
Apr 17 19:40:51 freenas istgt[5276]: Login from iqn.1998-01.com.vmware:zeal-25569a9e (192.168.0.11) on iqn.2011-03.org.example.istgt:silver LU2 (192.168.0.32:3260,1), ISID=23d000003, TSIH=23, CID=0, HeaderDigest=off, DataDigest=off
Apr 17 19:40:52 freenas istgt[5276]: Login from iqn.1998-01.com.vmware:zeal-25569a9e (192.168.0.11) on iqn.2011-03.org.example.istgt:gold-storage LU1 (192.168.0.32:3260,1), ISID=23d000003, TSIH=24, CID=0, HeaderDigest=off, DataDigest=off
Apr 17 19:40:53 freenas istgt[5276]: Login from iqn.1998-01.com.vmware:zeal-25569a9e (192.168.0.11) on iqn.2011-03.org.example.istgt:silver LU2 (192.168.0.31:3260,1), ISID=23d000002, TSIH=24, CID=0, HeaderDigest=off, DataDigest=off
Apr 17 19:40:54 freenas istgt[5276]: Login from iqn.1998-01.com.vmware:zeal-25569a9e (192.168.0.11) on iqn.2011-03.org.example.istgt:silver LU2 (192.168.0.30:3260,1), ISID=23d000001, TSIH=25, CID=0, HeaderDigest=off, DataDigest=off
Apr 17 19:40:55 freenas istgt[5276]: Login from iqn.1998-01.com.vmware:zeal-25569a9e (192.168.0.11) on iqn.2011-03.org.example.istgt:gold-storage LU1 (192.168.0.30:3260,1), ISID=23d000001, TSIH=25, CID=0, HeaderDigest=off, DataDigest=off

When I restart the networking, the connection picks back up and it works for a bit, until I put more stress on the HDD (large file transfers, un-raring large files). Are there any other logs I can check for this issue? It is very annoying, and pretty much a show stopper with Freenas if I cannot get it to work. Sorry if I missed some information, I am tired and it is past my bedtime ;). Please help.

 

[ProtoSD]

If you spend any significant amount of time reading the forums you'll notice two problems over and over:

1) FreeNAS and VM-whatever are not a good combination unless you're just experimenting
2) FreeNAS and iSCSI/ZFS are also a bad combination and plagued with problems

You're doing both, so there's not a lot you can do. Seriously, every other day I see a post about one or the other, or both...

 

[reesewon]

Fair enough, I suppose I was being ignorant. However, in my defence, I did search for network drop, loss etc. on the forums and could not find any related data. I also tried searching the errors above. I suppose I will have to look at an alternative solution.

That being said, the iSCSI device extent is not using ZFS, it is a direct link...