iSCSI offers block level access to your network storage, resulting in much improved performance versus traditional network storage protocols. The block level access means that iSCSI storage can be used with databases, etc.

Setting up the iSCSI target on the ReadyNAS was rather simple, and is explained here: http://www.readynas.com/?page_id=772

Setting up access to the iSCSI target that you just created in Vista is also fairly simple and is explained (with one omission) here: http://www.readynas.com/?page_id=809

In the article above it states that when you open disk management program the “initialize new disk” dialogue should appear. It did not appear for me, and it is poorly documented as to how to initialize a new disk which must be done before you can format the disk and assign it a drive letter.

To initialize the disk in Windows Vista, after setting up the iSCSI settings in “Control Panel” do the following:

1. Right click on your “Computer” and select “Manage.”

2. Select “Disk Management” on the left.

3. Scroll through the bottom area which displays your disks. Then right click the red plus sign on the Disk that needs to be initialized (Disk 5 in my case) and select “Initialize Disk.”

4. Unless you need otherwise, the default setting of MBR is most likely fine.

Now your disk has been initialized and can be formatted and mapped to a drive letter, which you can do like so:

1. Right click on the newly initialized disk and select “New Simple Volume.”

2. Navigate through the options, and assign a label and letter for your drive.

3. Your iSCSI volume is now formatted and mapped to a drive letter.

If when setting up the iSCSI target/discovery in your computer’s “Control Panel” you set the iSCSI target to be reconnected on each boot, the disk will always be available each time you reboot.

As for performance, small transfers (less than a couple of hundred megabytes) are copied extremely fast at about 120MB/sec (the full gigabit capacity of our network).

For larger file transfers the process starts out fast and then about half way through the process it slows down and eventually ends up at around 30MB/sec (approximately 240mbit).

These speeds are a lot faster than the 12MB/sec we get on our traditionally connected network volume on the same NAS.