I wish there was built in iSCSI initiator support on macOS. All of the halfway decent third-party ones either broke many OS versions ago (GlobalSAN) or cost a small fortune ($250 for Atto Xtend)
qdotme 2 days ago [-]
Hi HN - Tom here, I built scsipub.
The short version: it's iSCSI targets on the public internet. Pick
an image, get a block device. The free tier doesn't need a signup
at all - iscsiadm -m discovery -t sendtargets -p scsipub.com and
--login to iqn.2025-01.pub.scsipub:blank lands you a 64 MB
scratch disk. There's a small catalog of OS images you can mount
the same way.
The paid tier is where it gets less hobby-shaped: sessions survive
disconnects, a single target can expose multiple LUNs, and SCSI-3
Persistent Reservations work end-to-end (REGISTER / RESERVE /
RELEASE round-trip clean against sg_persist). That last bit is
the cluster-storage primitive — Pacemaker, ESXi HA, and Windows
MSCS all use PR for fencing — so you can actually back a 2-node
failover cluster off a target on the public internet.
The post linked in the submission is the architectural decision
log: Ranch 2.x listeners, a BEAM process per session, COW overlays
with per-sector bitmaps, Caddy-managed Let's Encrypt for the
iSCSI-TLS port without restarting the listener, and the four
open-iscsi quirks that each cost me few hours. There's a section on
what we're deliberately not solving (multi-region, RDMA, etc.)
so you know the scope.
Two companion projects ship as embedded sub-sites on the front
page — one turns an ESP32-S3 into a wireless iSCSI-to-USB bridge,
one lets a Raspberry Pi 3/4/5 netboot directly from a target. Both
linked from the landing page under "Hardware initiators".
Happy to answer any questions about the protocol, the deployment,
or the BEAM-side design choices.
futune 23 minutes ago [-]
I saw the mention of BEAM in the article, and immediately wanted to know more. But I don't have any specific questions unfortunately...
100ms 31 minutes ago [-]
I dislike neg comments but really curious - I can see the how but absolutely clueless about the why. Running a block device over a high latency WAN link seems like a terrible idea, what's the use case?
mbreese 2 minutes ago [-]
I don’t have a use case, but I was thinking the same thing. But then I realized that the WAN speeds available now are equal to or faster than the LAN speeds I had when I had reason to use iSCSI. And things worked out decently well then, so I can see this being useful.
jollymonATX 1 hours ago [-]
I should reevaluate my feeling about iscsi I developed around the md1000 era.
EvanAnderson 1 minutes ago [-]
If my experience with the MD1000 was like yours you developed the feeling for good reason. It has gotten better but I'll still take fibre channel over iSCSI every day.
sensarts 2 days ago [-]
This is the kind of post that makes me wish HN had bookmarks. The open-iscsi IQN slash issue alone was worth the read. Great work.
LargoLasskhyfv 2 days ago [-]
> This is the kind of post that makes me wish HN had bookmarks.
You could 'abuse' favorite for that. Works for whole threads, or just single comments.
qdotme 2 days ago [-]
Thanks! Let me know if you have any questions - I've long wanted to write something "system-level" in Elixir.
doublerabbit 2 days ago [-]
Click the "minutes ago" and then click on "favorite". Basic but it works.
Rendered at 11:45:45 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time) with Vercel.
The short version: it's iSCSI targets on the public internet. Pick an image, get a block device. The free tier doesn't need a signup at all - iscsiadm -m discovery -t sendtargets -p scsipub.com and --login to iqn.2025-01.pub.scsipub:blank lands you a 64 MB scratch disk. There's a small catalog of OS images you can mount the same way.
The paid tier is where it gets less hobby-shaped: sessions survive disconnects, a single target can expose multiple LUNs, and SCSI-3 Persistent Reservations work end-to-end (REGISTER / RESERVE / RELEASE round-trip clean against sg_persist). That last bit is the cluster-storage primitive — Pacemaker, ESXi HA, and Windows MSCS all use PR for fencing — so you can actually back a 2-node failover cluster off a target on the public internet.
The post linked in the submission is the architectural decision log: Ranch 2.x listeners, a BEAM process per session, COW overlays with per-sector bitmaps, Caddy-managed Let's Encrypt for the iSCSI-TLS port without restarting the listener, and the four open-iscsi quirks that each cost me few hours. There's a section on what we're deliberately not solving (multi-region, RDMA, etc.) so you know the scope.
Two companion projects ship as embedded sub-sites on the front page — one turns an ESP32-S3 into a wireless iSCSI-to-USB bridge, one lets a Raspberry Pi 3/4/5 netboot directly from a target. Both linked from the landing page under "Hardware initiators".
Happy to answer any questions about the protocol, the deployment, or the BEAM-side design choices.
You could 'abuse' favorite for that. Works for whole threads, or just single comments.