Gracefully disconnecting the iSCSI initiator?

Rainshadow wrote:
Sounds like the best approach in terms of maintenance is to ignore the fact that it's a network-attached device and just treat it exactly like a directly-attached SCSI drive array.

Correct. For all intents and purposes, windows itself isn't aware that it's a network device. Disconnecting the network cable in the middle of a write would effectively be the same as disconnecting a SATA or SCSI cable on a local hard drive.

The most obvious advice, is to keep the klutz out of the server room. With windows server 2k8, MPIO is actually worth using(2k3 with regards to MPIO and even iSCSI was a bit of a hack job on microsoft's part) and you would just physically route a second network cable elsewhere, that would give your iSCSI connection some redundancy. Just keep in mind that just like disconnecting the network cable, the same problems can occur if power is suddenly lost to the switch, the NAS, etc.