A little heads up to those who are implementing an iSCSI SAN with the Microsoft iSCSI Initiator. Do not make the iSCSI volumes Dynamic Disks on your Windows Computers unless you are using an iSCSI HBA. I accidentally made 2 volumes Dynamic disks and spent many hours troubleshooting why those volumes would not mount on boot-up and would go offline, without notice. We are using Intel PRO 1000/PT adapters and I had a ton of problems with keeping a stable iSCSI connection. After some hardcore Googling, I stumbled onto this info from the "Microsoft iSCSI Software Initiator 2.x Users Guide":
Dynamic disks (applies to Windows 2000 and Windows Server 2003)
Configuring volumes on iSCSI disks as Dynamic disk volumes using the Microsoft software iSCSI initiator is not currently supported. It has been observed that timing issues may prevent dynamic disk volumes on iSCSI disks from being reactivated at system startup.
Hardware-based iSCSI initiators (iSCSI Host Bus Adapters or "HBAs") can typically make the devices that it connects to available much earlier during the system startup process than the iSCSI software initiator can. Therefore, iSCSI HBAs may provide support for dynamic disk volumes.
I missed those details on my first reading for the Microsoft iSCSI Users Guide but I hope this helps someone else avoid this same problem!
VERY helpful! Thanks for the post, even if it was over a year ago. :-) I ran into this issue last night on a SAN upgrade, and your post came up in my google search.
Posted by: Dave M | October 12, 2008 at 06:41 PM