Feature request: ISCSI support

[sladg]

Hey!
Would love to see ISCSI support next. Currently, only feasible way is using paid software such as Daemon Tools, it's not as expensive, but it's huge suite when I really need just a way to simply mount ISCSI.

[nohajc]

Can you describe your use case in more detail? I'm aware of iSCSI though I never really used it.

I assume you have a storage server on your local network and want to access its exported LUNs?

Anyway, iSCSI typically exposes whole disks and not just partitions, right?

I'm just wondering how it would work. If you'd rather address partitions somehow for mounting them separately or if all partitions of the disk would be mounted automatically...

[sladg]

Sure! In my use-case, I have Synology. I've configured couple of ISCSI volumes for use in VMs. For debugging, I would like to mount them to my Mac so that I can go through files, inspect / copy&paste.

Different use-case would be Synology's CSI, which allows for automatic creation of ISCSI volumes as persistent storage for containers in K8s - https://github.com/SynologyOpenSource/synology-csi
In such a case, I might want to migrate to different storage class and would want to rsync the files elsewhere, mounting the volume locally would greatly improve the ease of doing so.

Using the remote ISCSI volume as backup target and/or remote folder is also an option as it can be put behind Auth and offers better performance (sometimes) compared to NFS.

[nohajc]

Yes, of course with anylinuxfs, you would add the NFS layer nonetheless. The options are limited when it comes to exposing storage from guest to host (compared to the other way).

What kind of auth mechanism does Synology use for securing these iSCSI volumes?

[sladg]

Yes, of course with anylinuxfs, you would add the NFS layer nonetheless. The options are limited when it comes to exposing storage from guest to host (compared to the other way).

What kind of auth mechanism does Synology use for securing these iSCSI volumes?

personally, I feel like that's okay. In case performance or serious (production-level) use is necessary, direct ISCSI would be used to avoid overhead.

For testing, debugging, it would be nice tho, even with NFS overhead.

The auth standart is CHAP I believe - username+password combination. You could also do "Mutual CHAP" which is basically auth the opposite way so that client knows it's talking to correct server.

[sladg]

PS. found another existing solution: https://www.kernsafe.com/product/macos-iscsi-initiator.aspx
However, wasn't able to find technical details on how it works internally and if it's somehow native

[nohajc]

Interesting. I will consider this. Once I have a testing setup, it shouldn't be too difficult to add support.