I had a small shock this evening when I noticed that one of the iSCSI mounts to my lab servers was not working as expected. I could see a folder structure but no data in the folder. I have had issues in the past because the iSCSI mount is a dynamic disk (Yes I know now that I should have left it a basic disk but I have not got enough space to move the relevant data off, covert to basic and move it back again) and when I reboot the server that it mounts to I have to reactivate the disk manually and recreate the appropriate shares. This issue was different.

I logged onto the admin interface for my NAS (Thecus 5200BR Pro) and checked the disk status to find the following screen

I hadnt been notified that my Nas was not 100% healthy so this was quite a shock. Clicking further on the Warning I had the following screen confront me

I think this is why I have some errors on my server. I shut down all the VMs and powered the NAS back on to do a file system check which it seemed to pass but it only checks the file system and not the iSCSI mounts that exist.

I rebooted the NAS again into normal operating mode and powered my ESX servers back on, logged back into my server with the iSCSI mount and reactivated the local disk and shared the folders again. Data was there 🙂

I dont trust that this wont happen again so I have purchsed a further two 1TB Western Digital hard drives from my preferred supplies (www.overclockers.co.uk) and am having them shipped to work so I can get them installed as soon as possible in my lab. I think I am also going to take this as a chance to move the iSCSI mount away from the existing setup and onto a new iSCSI array that is mounted on a dedicated iSCSI LAN and hopefully improve performance a little bit.