is there any iSCSI Initiator for Lion OS?

Count me among the interested, especially if you can support multiple initiators connected to a single target.

I got the globalSAN iSCSI initiator v4.1 to work on our MacBook Pro, running 10.8.2, with a Synology Diskstation.

For mysterious reasons it doesn't work on our MacBook Air, also on Mountain Lion 10.8.2. It shows connected in the globalSAN iSCSI preference pane, but the volume doesn't mount.

Anybody has ideas why that may be?

any console output ? anything from sudo dmesg ?

Can you see the disk when you type

diskutil list

Does the SAN see the initiator ?

I also use the globalSAN iSCSI Initiator with both Lion and Mountain Lion. The main problem I have with it is that I have to connect around 100 LUNS to my Compellent SAN and it doesn't easily connect to all the LUNs. I have to constantly connect and reconnect untill all my LUNs stay and are accessible by XSAN. I use the XSan client to connect to my Stornext MDC which then front my entire Compellent SAN as one big shareable Filesystem across all our Mac Pros. I really choose this solution over the ATTO on because of price, and my Dell Compellent rep said that the ATTO iSCSI initiator is definitely not worth the price and has caused him major headaches.

FWIW, we have spent many, many hours connecting Macs to iSCSI targets, and have had nothing but frustration and headaches with the Studio Network Solutions product, and its predecessor GlobalSAN. Mainly kernel panics, and if/when there was any tiny update to OSX, it broke.

What has worked like a charm is the ATTO product Xtend SAN iSCSI Initiator. Yes, it's $200, but it works really really well and doesn't crash your Mac.

Got it. I still have 2 more iSCSI initiators to buy. I will buy one ATTO iSCSI initiator and test it our with my environment to make sure it works better than the GlobalSAN one.

Hello MiSCSI,

How far did you guys get? I'm also looking for a iSCSI initiator for my home network. Spending 200$ sounds like a lot to me for such a thing.

Thanks

Xenu,

Thank you for your suggestions and apologies for taking so long to react.

When I type diskutil list the disk does not show up.

Console shows this:

26/02/2013 22:39:34.000 kernel[0]: GLO Warning: Tail (66 bytes) of the Data Segment (PDU 0xffffff800d778000) will be ignored.

26/02/2013 22:39:34.000 kernel[0]: EMCDiskArrayController5::probe fails

26/02/2013 22:39:34.000 kernel[0]: IOSCSIMultipathedLogicalUnit: Failed to Add Path 0xffffff8010efc200

26/02/2013 22:40:18.399 WebProcess[203]: objc[203]: Object 0x7fdaa0c1ca30 of class NSUserDefaults autoreleased with no pool in place - just leaking - break on objc_autoreleaseNoPool() to debug

26/02/2013 22:40:18.423 WebProcess[203]: objc[203]: Object 0x7fdaa0c1ca30 of class NSUserDefaults autoreleased with no pool in place - just leaking - break on objc_autoreleaseNoPool() to debug

26/02/2013 22:41:32.719 mdworker[288]: Unable to talk to lsboxd

26/02/2013 22:41:32.724 mdworker[287]: Unable to talk to lsboxd

26/02/2013 22:41:32.849 sandboxd[289]: ([288]) mdworker(288) deny mach-lookup com.apple.ls.boxd

I am not sure what to look for from sudo dmesg.

Though I don't think it has anything to do with your issue there are issues in general with iSCSI & spotlight. You'll want to add the volumes to privacy if you ever get them mounted but in the mean time you could try just unloading spotlight to keep it out of the way.

sudo launchctl unload -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.metadata.mds.plist

To re-activate

sudo launchctl load -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.metadata.mds.plist

Are you trying to connect the Air over wireless? If so that's a big no go, you would need to use a gigabit thunderbolt adapter. If all you have is wifi or a USB ethernet adapter you need to be using NAS to access the volume. This means connecting that volume to a desktop machine & then sharing it out.

iSCSI should be treated like direct attached storage, it needs to have a consistent gigabit ethernet connection. Trying to play around with anything less can cause data corruption to the volume.

One more thing I almost forgot, I wouldn't try to use a gigabit USB adapter, they have lots of quirks. gigabit is 1000Mbit/s while USB 2.0 is 480Mbit/s, do the math.

Hi, Studio Network Solutions here, makers of the globalSAN iSCSI initiator.

We have thousands of users worldwide with successful deployments of our initiator. I work in support and have not seen a case opened relating to our product causing kernel panics. That said, we're happy to assist anyone having trouble using our product, either at the forums or through our support system.

We also offer a free trial mode, and our purchase price is very reasonable. I encourage anyone to take a look.

Virtualbox has a build in iscsi initiator. I didn't succeed in using the build in initiator but I installed snow leopard in virtualbox on my mountain lion system. In snow leopard i'm using the free globalsan iscsi initiator version 4.1.0.279 to mount my iscsi disks on my qnap nas. With virtualbox in bridged networking mode i can access the iscsi disks in mountain lion. This solution saves me the money studio networks solution asks for the global san iscsi initiator for mountain lion which was formerly free. I think apple should offer iscsi support and studio network solutions should ask a reasonable price.

Altough this solution isn't very sophisticated the perfomance is quite good. It's much faster then the afp sharres offered by the qnap nas.

janp1964 wrote:

..In snow leopard i'm using the free globalsan iscsi initiator version 4.1.0.279 to mount my iscsi disks on my qnap nas.

Is there a free version of globalsan iscsi initiator?

Sounds like an interesting solution using VirtualBox. I'd like to run overnight backups using iSCSI and have no problem using a VM for that. However I'm curious how you set it up and how you can access the iSCSI target from within your main OS (Mountain Lion). Because the main advantage of iSCSI (to me) is that the target acts as if it was locally connected. Does bridged networking mode make Mountain Lion think the iSCSI disks are locally connected? And did you consider using Windows in VirtualBox, as it has iSCSI support built in, or a Linux distribution? I've heard globalSAN iSCSI initiator is very unstable.

In VirtualBox in bridged networking mode once the iSCSI disks are mounted in Snow Leopard and filesharing is on you can mount the disks in Mountain Lion too as if they are locally connected. I never had problems with the globalSAN iSCSI initiator in Snow Leopard. The version I mentioned was (and is) offered free but doesn't support (Mountain) Lion. I use it for years on my unibody MacBook. When the iSCSI disks are mounted on my MacBook with SL I can mount them on my MacMini with ML too (over WiFi) but that's not as fast and reliable as the VirtualBox solution on my MacMini ML.

I Guess if you use Windows or Linux in VirtualBox this would work too but I didn't try out. Probably there is a difference because of the lack of afp filesharing protocol.

I don't think the price of the GlobalSan iSCSI initiator is reasonable. Windows and Linux offer support for free. SNS offered support for free too which I appriciated very much. Since Apple seems to refuse offering iSCSI support I can imagine SNS discontinued their free support. But asking a price of around 80 euro for a service that was formerly free isn't reasonable. If the price would be round 40 euro i would consider a buy of such basic software.