How to create iSCSI target using the entire drive?

My Cloud OS 3 Personal & Network Attached Storage My Cloud DL Series
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This sounds silly, but after setting up the DL4100 in RAID 5, I could not assign the entire 11.89TB to an iSCSI target… Only integer numbers seem to be the valid input. And the only choice of TB or GB offered no help because I could not enter: 11890 GB either?!

What am I missing?

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Welcome to the Community.

Maybe you should try contacting WD’s Technical Support about this. You can do so either by phone or email.

To Contact WD for Technical Support
http://support.wdc.com/contact/index.asp?lang=en

Support by Country
http://support.wdc.com/country/index.asp

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wdshark wrote:

This sounds silly, but after setting up the DL4100 in RAID 5, I could not assign the entire 11.89TB to an iSCSI target… Only integer numbers seem to be the valid input. And the only choice of TB or GB offered no help because I could not enter: 11890 GB either?!

 

What am I missing?

I heard that is a design from WD.  They only allow integer number.  I have that same problem.  There is no way around it.   You just have to request them to add this new feature and their next firmware.  I did request a month back and have not heard anything from them yet.

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Hi,

I guessed so… looks like we need more people to request such a “feature”… Perhaps if they had an option to provide size as a percentage of the total volume size or provide input via a slider control, that might be an alternative solution that could help us users. Just some ideas… :wink:

BTW is there a url to where we can provide feature requests?

Thanks!

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You can try herefor feature requests.  No clue how well it is monitored

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Gramps wrote:

You can try herefor feature requests.  No clue how well it is monitored

It is monitored, but takes a while to go through the process.  However, I doubt it will ever become a feature, especially since if you have all the drive committed to iSCSI, you wouldn’t be able to do a firmware update, or use any of the third party apps, or store any of your settings.  And you might as well forget about any logs or drive housekeeping.  And it probably explains why you can’t input the full amount of GB’s.  Anyway, you can try… 

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Thanks to all who have responded…

Here’s my take: 4TB x4 in RAID 5 = 11.89TB but via iSCSI creation will result in 0.89TB unallocable to iSCSI due to the GUI disabling non-interger values (ie: no decimal points). That is 890GB of storage that is supposedly used for firmware upgrades, logs, etc?!  :angry:

Snooping around I noticed that the validation is only performed via javascript and a quick re-POST to the unit of the params can trigger modification/creation of a non-integer iSCSI volume sizes. Please note that you can only grow volume sizes and not shrink them! Below is a walk-thru of how to do this:

Disclaimer: WARNING: USE AT YOUR OWN RISK

  1. Create the iSCSI volume as per normal but at the integer value less than what you intend (eg: if you wanted 1.5TB, create 1TB) then wait for the iSCSI volume to be created.

  2. Use a web browser with debugging turned on and capturing traffic. For my example I am using Firefox and hit F12 to fire up the debug tool. Pick “Network” and you will see Firefox start picking up all traffic to the DL4100.

  3. Go into the iSCSI volume and choose “Details” to modify it. Put the current size as the modified size and click “Apply”. Look in the list of messages to locate a POST message “iscsi_mgr.cgi” that has a Request body with a “size” parameter and select that to be resent.

dl4100resizeISCSI.jpg
dl4100resizeISCSI.jpg841×425 72.6 KB

  1. In this copy of the same message, look in Request Body and the list of parameters being passed back to the unit. You should find one of the parameters called “size”. This value is sent to the unit in GB… Change the value to a GB value that you desire (eg: 1TB would appear as “1000”, so you can change it to “1500” for 1.5TB) and then re-POST this POST message back to the unit.

  2. Wait for the update to transact and verify that your iSCSI volume has indeed been resized to a “non-Integer” TB value.

That’s it! I hope this helps others who have been trapped by this limitation. Please be mindfull not to allocate all your dive space since as Bill_S has mentioned, some space is required by the system for its own housekeeping operations.

Good Luck!

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I would also recommend testing a system reset to make sure that the value holds.  I’ve seen some values default to a previous value when the drive is reset.