On Apr 9, 2008, at 11:46 AM, Bob Friesenhahn wrote: > On Wed, 9 Apr 2008, Ross wrote: >> >> Well the first problem is that USB cables are directional, and you >> don't have the port you need on any standard motherboard. That > > Thanks for that info. I did not know that. > >> Adding iSCSI support to ZFS is relatively easy since Solaris already >> supported TCP/IP and iSCSI. Adding USB support is much more >> difficult and isn't likely to happen since afaik the hardware to do >> it just doens't exist. > > I don't believe that Firewire is directional but presumably the > Firewire support in Solaris only expects to support certain types of > devices. My workstation has Firewire but most systems won't have it. > > It seemed really cool to be able to put your laptop next to your > Solaris workstation and just plug it in via USB or Firewire so it can > be used as a "removable" storage device. Or Solaris could be used on > appropriate hardware to create a more reliable portable storage > device. Apparently this is not to be and it will be necessary to deal > with iSCSI instead. > > I have never used iSCSI so I don't know how difficult it is to use as > temporary "removable" storage under Windows or OS-X.
i'm not so sure what you're really after, but i'm guessing one of two things: 1) a global filesystem? if so - ZFS will never be globally accessible from 2 hosts at the same time without an interposer layer such as NFS or Lustre .. zvols could be exported to multiple hosts via iSCSI or FC- target but that's only 1/2 the story .. 2) an easy way to export volumes? agree - there should be some sort of semantics that would a signal filesystem is removable and trap on USB events when the media is unplugged .. of course you'll have problems with uncommitted transactions that would have to roll back on the next plug, or somehow be query-able iSCSI will get you a block/character device level sharing from a zvol (pseudo device) or the equivalent of a blob filestore .. you'd have to format it with a filesystem, but that filesystem could be a global one (eg: QFS) and you could multi-host natively that way. --- .je _______________________________________________ zfs-discuss mailing list zfs-discuss@opensolaris.org http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/zfs-discuss
