iSCSI target randomly gets dropped while doing incremental backup

[Dennis_S_]

I have one office running the same setup as here but on random days of the week (some days more frequently than others), it will drop the iSCSI connection at least once and the backups won't run.

I am wondering if anyone else has experienced this and has a solution so that the iSCSI will continue to be connected with proper uptime.  I am running one office with iSCSI connected to a Synology rack server and it never drops the iSCSI target, whereas the second office is doing this intermittantly.  After it was doing this practically every day, I ran all of the updates on Windows Server 2008r2 and then it worked fine for 2 weeks and yesterday it dropped the iSCSI connection again just the same.

Yesterday it dropped the iSCSI target while performing a back up and the windows system logs don't show anything besides it losing the iSCSI connection and then attempting to reconnect.  I can always manually reconnect the iSCSI fine and then I have to manually restart the services (I do this within the media server program) and then I have to disable and enable the storage that points to the iSCSI target.

We have been experiencing this issue for a few weeks now and the Synology server does not show any errors or warnings in its logs or the device status pop up.

[teiva-boy]

There is a known issue that during the Database maintenance task at around 2am (default time setting) that this happens.  You are not the first to mention it.  Go back a week or two in this forum, search for iSCSI, and you'll find the other person experiencing this.

Basically a known issue with 2012, and not fixed in the latest SP1a last I recall.

Unless your disconnects are happening at a different time slot, then that wouldn't apply to you.

If anything, I would verify you have the latest iSCSI initiator (it's not part of Windows updates), the latest Synology firmware updates, and latest NIC updates (both firmware and driver software)

[teiva-boy]

Ah here you go:

https://www-secure.symantec.com/connect/forums/be-2012-storage-offline

https://www-secure.symantec.com/connect/forums/database-management-job-brings-disk-folders-offline

I'd say open a support case, mention these two articles and wait for a fix...

Save yourself the trouble and open a case via the web!  Suppoort is slammed with all the other BE2012 issues.

[Dennis_S_]

Well the iscsi went down after 7PM and the maintenance is set to run at 4:00am so I don't think that is it.

There is no downloadable iSCSI initiator update. There is a separate iSCSI target software but I am confident that isn't the one to get and to leave that program alone and not install it.

Synology is up to date.  NIC drivers are part of HyperV so I don't think there's any problem with those.  I have never touched firmware for a NIC before.  I would have to update the firmware through HyperV command line or otherwise and then also update the HyperV NIC driver which is probably the same as what Windows Server 2008r2 uses.

I'm going to try to run wireshark and see if it finds anything.  So far everything is still stable so this intermittent issue isn't going to be easy to sort out.

[Marco_Tafur_-_Q]

Does the Synology box have stand-by features on? or does the iSCSI NICs go offline after some period of time.

What does the event viewer says? Are there any logs on the Synology?

I think this is a Windows problem and not related to BE.