Like fibre channel SANs, iSCSI SANs provide significant flexibility and offer data protection benefits not inherent with direct attached storage. Until the release of the 2.0 version of the iSCSI initiator, Microsoft's solution was less than ideal for high-performance, high-availability environments, unless third party software was used.
The 2.0 initiator adds a number of features that make Microsoft's software useful for high-end applications:
It's highly recommended that you uninstall previous versions of the initiator before you install the latest version.
The Microsoft iSCSI Initiator works under Windows 2000 SP4 or higher, Windows XP SP1 or higher, and Windows Server 2003 or higher.
A reminder for those installing version 2.0 of the initiator
In a tip I wrote last year, I
told you about a problem that you
might face when using an iSCSI array to house file shares. I want to
reiterate that advice here as I've seen dozens of messages on various forums
from people suffering from this problem. If you don't take steps to change
service dependencies, when you create shares, they will seem to disappear each
time you reboot the server.
To avoid this problem, from a command prompt, type sc config LanManServer depend=MSiSCSI and press [Enter]. This will force the LanManServer service to wait for the iSCSI initiator service before starting, which will keep your shares intact.