On Fri, Jun 01, 2007 at 06:37:21PM -0700, Richard L. Hamilton wrote: > > I'd love to be able to server zvols out as SCSI or FC > > targets. Are > > there any plans to add this to ZFS? That would be > > amazingly awesome. > > Can one use a spare SCSI or FC controller as if it were a target?
Most definitely. FreeBSD already has an FC Target Mode (which they've had for a while, don't know about SCSI Target Mode) > Even if the hardware is capable, I don't see what you describe as > a ZFS thing really; it isn't for iSCSI, except that ZFS supports > a shareiscsi option (and property?) by "knowing" how to tell the > iSCSI server to do the right thing. > > That is, there would have to be something like an iSCSI server > except that it "listened" on an otherwise unused SCSI or FC > interface. Ohhhhh, I hadn't thought of it that way. So the FC/SCSI Target Mode would have to exist independent of ZFS and the just allow ZFS to hook into its configuration like it does iSCSI. Hmmmmm. > I think that would require not just the daemon but probably new > driver facilities as well. Given that one can run IP over FC, > it seems to me that in principle it ought to be possible, at least > for FC. Not so sure about SCSI. I'll have to poke around and see how FreeBSD does it and look at the Solaris iSCSI stuff, that could be interesting. > Also not sure about performance. I suspect even high-end SAN controllers > have a bit more latency than the underlying drives. And this is a > general-purpose > OS we're talking about doing this to; I don't know that it would be > acceptably close, > or as robust (depending on the hardware) as a high-end FC SAN, although it > might be > possible to be a good deal cheaper. In my case performance is the least of my worries. I'm looking to get such things as VAXen and PDP-11s pointed at a small SCSI "disk". Small SCSI disks are hard to find and ready to die. Most of the PDP-11 OSes wouldn't know what to do with 300GB of disk space. a nice 4G (or smaller) FC/SCSI Target disk would be perfect as it would be a drop in the bucket of my ZFS Pool, and would also allow for a nice redundant "disk" for the older hardware. Just a thought. :) -brian -- "Perl can be fast and elegant as much as J2EE can be fast and elegant. In the hands of a skilled artisan, it can and does happen; it's just that most of the shit out there is built by people who'd be better suited to making sure that my burger is cooked thoroughly." -- Jonathan Patschke _______________________________________________ zfs-discuss mailing list zfs-discuss@opensolaris.org http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/zfs-discuss
