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.

Over the Internet? Doubtful.

And iSCSI as a protocol is a mature solution - it's always the implementation what can add some surprises. But otherwise it works and even survives the network switch stack split-brain sigh.

always wanted to see if this was doable using NBD or even RBD over the internet. but I do love the ESP32 device they came up with.