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Microsoft iSCSI Software Target 3.3: Support Policies on Windows Server 2008 R2

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This article provides the support policies for Microsoft iSCSI Software Target 3.3 from the download center. iSCSI Software Target has also released with the Windows Storage Server, which is an OEM edition. For customers who have issues running on the Windows Storage Server, please contact your OEM provider for support.

Microsoft iSCSI Software Target is a Windows-based software storage solution. For details about usage and product documentation, please refer to Microsoft iSCSI Software Target 3.3.

Microsoft supports iSCSI Software Target deployment if the following conditions are met:

iSCSI target OS support

iSCSI Software Target supports installation on Windows Server 2008 R2 and service packs, including:

  • Windows Server 2008 R2 Standard

  • Windows Server 2008 R2 Enterprise

  • Windows Server 2008 R2 Datacenter

Server core is not supported for this release.

Storage support

iSCSI Software Target supports VHD hosted on NTFS file system.

Server hardware support

iSCSI Software Target requires a minimum of 2GB of memory, and a 1GHz processor.

Clustering support

iSCSI Software Target supports clustered configurations using Microsoft failover cluster. In the clustering configuration, iSCSI Software Target has resources that depend on the “Physical Disk”, “IP Address”, “IPv6 Address”, and “Network Name” resources types. Other resource types are not supported by the iSCSI Target service.

VDS/VSS hardware providers OS support

iSCSI Software Target VDS/VSS hardware providers support installation on Windows Server 2008 and Windows Server 2008 R2 and service packs.

Hyper-V host backup (using auto recovery) is not supported in this release. For application-consistent backup, you can invoke the backup within the VM guest machine.

HPC providers OS support

Windows HPC Server 2008 R2 and service pack is supported.

Initiator support

Microsoft has tested the Windows inbox initiator running on Windows 2008 R2, as well as a number of third party initiators. The iSCSI Software Target supports third party initiators that are compliant to RFC 3720. For details about the tested initiators, refer to the TechNet article Interoperability with Non-Microsoft iSCSI Initiators.

Implementation release notes

Refer to the TechNet article Microsoft iSCSI Software Target 3.3 Implementation Notesfor details about known issues.

Performance and scalability considerations

iSCSI Software Target has been tested to provide storage to Hyper-V VMs. With the 3.3 release, the tested iSCSI Software Target running in a clustering configuration could support up to 90 VMs running on eight Hyper-V hosts. All VMs survived after an unplanned iSCSI target failover.

For generic scalability support limitations, please refer to the TechNet article Scalability Limits.