I have had linux mint on my back up laptop for a couple of years and want to move to full time linux. I have to run Quickbooks pro desktop and want to know if it would be better to connect to a LUN on my NAS via iscsi and run a VM windows or run everything on my laptop and just back up to NAS?
Seems like the last solution would be cleaner but just wanted some opinions.
you could also create shared storage on your VM on a FAT32 which will be understood by both Linux and Windows. You could run QBPro in your Windows VM, and just setup a shared mount which a sub partition on your local machine. If you attach your LUN through iSCSI from your VM will work fine, but, if you want to be able to edit without your local NAS - using as a backup would likely be better. So make sure your local storage on your VM is large enough to accomodate your working storage needed. Then you can decouple if your LUN or other local Linux storage is mounted and available to Linux Mint.
Great idea, I was thinking about that too. I tried the open iscsi and it even recognized the Synology NAS Lun. I was good that it placed it under sdb drive but it would either not boot up or was very slow. Plus I couldn’t get it to connect and mount on boot up.
I may try the VW windows 10 iscsi connectiona and then use snapshot replication for recovery options. I wish Synology Active backup worked flawless but it has some issues too.
Yeah, I am going to be trying to setup an iSCSI NAS with LUNs on my local system. Likely I will be using a Raspberry PI as my host though, which will give me a little flexibility as to the access types. Let me know how you get things working. 
Let me know if that works. What Pi are you using?
I am going the VM route with windows 10. Haven’t decided on my Synology Active Backup for Business to back up the VM or connect to my NAS through VM iscsi and then create a snapshot version of the LUN on the NAS. I like to use a laptop for portability and the LUN doesn’t fit very well into that. I do have a OMG plan if I can pull it off. Use my Synology VPN plus on my router and VPN into my home network and connect to the LUN remotely since the NAS will think I am within the LAN. 
I am looking at a Lenovo X1 17" carbon with 64gb ram and I7- 8th gen processor for my base Linux machine. This should have enough horsepower to run what I need then I will have my old Surface pro 4 as backup incase something bad happens.
The iSCSI through the WAN / VPN might be slow for a LUN mount, but, as long as it is low volume that should totally work. I am using the Canakit keybord model: