[justsomehnguy]

> Been a long time since anything iscsi related didn't hand 9k, for boot or otherwise.

Don't have anything on the hands to look if the boot firmware even allows to set 9k, but I didn't touch iSCSI boot for a long time, so I would take your word for it.

> But I look at it this way. You need 40gbit networking ... is already 5x-10x slower than nvme.

This one.

> It'll be fast enough for lots of things, especially home/lab use

Yep, in OP's case I would consider just leaving the OS on the local [fast enough] drive and using iSCSI (if for some reason NFS/SMB doesn't fit) for any additional storage. It would be fast enough for almost everything, while completely eliminating any iSCSI boot shenanigans /me shudders in Broadcom flashbacks.

Another neat thing about iSCSI is what you can re/connect it to any device on the network in a couple of minutes (first time, even faster later), sometimes it comes really handy.