Quick Start Guide (SATA)

Introduction

This document presents the basic information on installing and initial configuration of AcloudA VDAS (rev 1.0). It is a comprehensive step-by-step guide, designed for users who are new to AcloudA product and technologies.

For any technical inquiries please contact us.

Warning !

The device is a hardware iSCSI initiator. Until you install the iSCSI session, the device will not be displayed on the system.

Installing product, downloding plug-ins, changing IQN

Installation:

1. Turn your computer off first

2. Connect the AcloudA as a hard disk

3. Connect the network cable

4. Turn your computer on

5. Enable the “Hot Plug” option in “BIOS Setup”, for SATA

(in which connected the device)

6. Download and install the utility

7. Open the browser and go to the ip-address of the device

(for the first usage, the device receives an ip-address via DHCP, the device address can be viewed in leasess DHCP-Server)

8. Log in using your login and password

(by default: login – admin, password – password)

9. Click the iSCSI tab

10. Add target

(specifying ip and port, click “add server”)

11. Click on the server you added, and select the target from the list

12. Enter the data for authentication, if necessary

(it should consist only of Latin characters and numbers and be a length of 12 to 16 characters)

13. Select the “SATA” connection interface

14. Click “add connection” and continue working like with regular hard disk

Changing IQN of device:

1. Select “iSCSI” tab

2. Check “Change IQN” box

3. Enter new IQN and apply

(changing IQN is available only from version 1.55)

AcloudA - GUIDE - Changing IQN

4. To reset the IQN to the factory settings you must completely reset the settings in the “Reset” tab.

Recommendations & Troubleshooting

Recommendations

The best performance was achieved with MTU 4400.
It is recommended that you allow jumbo frame packets on the network.
If the write speed to the device does not exceed 1Mb / sec, while the bandwidth of the channel is much wider than 10Mbit / sec, the device most likely works without UltraDMA support.
To reset the settings, install two jumpers on the board (located near the network connector) and turn on the device. The existing configuration file will be erased.

Table of ACHI operation modes:

Switching UltraDMA modes:
AcloudA Management Util V1.0 – utility for switching modes UltraDMA.

In a normal situation, after installing it, the service automatically switches on the required

mode of operation, if this does not happen, it is recommended to perform the switching yourself.
To check which mode the device is running in, it is necessary to execute in the console:

Acloudacli.exe -list

For manual control of UltraDMA modes, it is necessary to enter in the console:
Acloudacli.exe -drive <device number> -udma <version of UDMA>

Troubleshooting Guide

AcloudA Troubleshooting-1

The board operates with 1 stream; therefore, the speed is directly proportional to the latency.

We do not guarantee correct operation for channel widths to the server lower than 3 Mbit/s with delays greater than 65ms, as errors can occur when working with the file system and the ATA driver.

Some system administrators can partially or completely block certain packets including ICMP, UDP, TCP and ping.

Different file systems can have different timeout parameters for blocks.

Different implementations of iSCSI servers can have different boundary settings for response time and session creation.

The bandwidth of a channel can dynamically change due to the rebuilding of the routing tables of the network. You can check the route changes using the traceroute or MTR console utilities on Linux, and tracert on Windows.

Timeout variables for AcloudA (rev 2):

AcloudA Troubleshooting timeout

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