iSCSI shares disappear after reboot on Windows

I experienced a problem the other day on one of our Windows 2003 servers where shares created on an iSCSI LUN connected to the server disappeared after the server was rebooted. By this I mean that folders that had previously been shared on this device were no longer shared, and needed to be completely reconfigured.

I turns out that this is due to the fact that the ‘iSCSI initiator’ service has not initialised by the time that the ‘Server’ service has started, and so the drive is not yet available, and therefore the shares are not recreated on boot up. A quick google lead me to a Microsoft KB article which outlines how to configure the ‘Server’ service to depend on the ‘iSCSI Initiator’ service allowing the drive to initialise before the ‘Server’ service has started. Simply follow the KB to fix the issue.

References:

File shares on iSCSI devices may not be re-created when you restart the computer