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One of the best solutions that we have purchased is a Finisar Fiber Channel TAP, Probe, and Analyzer. These pieces of hardware combined with the software sitting behind the Finisar equipment can help to analyze a problem very quickly.

Andy Loftus, National Center for Supercomputing Applications at the Univ. of Illinois

ML380 In-Depth iSCSI Analysis

INTRODUCTION TO ISCSI TROUBLESHOOTING
This section provides a quick refresher on basic protocol-level iSCSI concepts, and prepares the students to move deeper into the protocol. Upon completion students are able to:

Identify the parts of an iSCSI PDU
Describe the effects of segmentation by TCP on the iSCSI PDU
Locate iSCSI PDUs in an analyzer trace, including PDUs that are embedded in the TCP segment

ISCSI ARCHITECTURE AND THE TCP/IP NETWORK
This section discusses the architectural design of iSCSI and the implications of transport through the TCP/IP network. iSCSI transmission inside of the TCP/IP stack is discussed and illustrated. Upon completion
students are able to:

Identify when a new TCP connection is created.
Describe the process by which TCP acknowledges its data stream
Describe the TCP sliding window and how it relates to flow control
Describe the TCP slow start and congestion avoidance algorithms and how they relate to TCP flow control
Identify the basic concepts defining IPv6 and the ramifications of converting from IPv4 to IPv6
Describe how segmentation by TCP affects iSCSI transmission including locating & reassembling an iSCSI operation that has been broken up by TCP retransmissions

TROUBLESHOOTING NETWORK ISSUES IN ISCSI
This section details common network issues faced in production iSCSI environments using a mixture of live and pre-captured network traces. Upon completion students are able to:

Describe the issues introduced by the use of firewalls and network address translation
Describe and identify issues presented by long distance, high latency networks and possible solutions
Describe Ethernet jumbo frames and the implications of their use

TROUBLESHOOTING DATA ISSUES IN ISCSI
This section details the various error recovery levels in iSCSI and data corruption issues that may arise ina production iSCSI environment using error injection and network traces. Upon completion students are able to:

Describe the error recovery levels available in the iSCSI protocol.
Identify data corruption and recovery from CRC errors.
Identify data corruption and recovery from Digest errors
Identify security issues from CHAP mismatching and failure.
Identify common SCSI issues and how to troubleshoot them within iSCSI.

TROUBLESHOOTING PERFORMANCE ISSUES IN ISCSI
This section describes various methods of iSCSI performance tuning. Upon completion students are able to:

Describe and identify possible performance tuning options provided by iSCSI and TCP/IP protocol options and parameters.
Describe and identify possible real-world performance issues.