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Doesn't look like I've had any bites out there so I'll share my |
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findings at least for any future googlers... |
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|
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The good news is iSCSI on Linux works. I have been able to export |
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block devices from one Linux machine and mount them on another. |
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Apparently the Windows drivers are well tested too but I don't have any |
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Windows machines to test with. The initiator sees the exported iSCSI |
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LUN as if it were a locally attached SCSI disk. If you export an LVM |
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volume it appears to the remote machine as a local SCSI disk and you |
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can do all the usual stuff to it - i.e. you need to either create a |
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partition table or use lvm on the remote machine to portion out your |
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virtual device. |
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|
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The bad news is the iSCSI target driver is lacking a few key functions. |
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It doesn't seem to handle resizing volumes very well - I tried |
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resizing an exported LVM volume and all hell broke loose. The biggest |
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problem however is that it doesn't appear to let you make configuration |
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changes without restarting the target daemon. This is a major problem |
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as it means you have to unmount _ALL_ iSCSI volumes before you can add |
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a new one on the target server. This wouldn't make for much of a SAN |
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if every time you wanted to make a configuration change you had to down |
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all your servers! |
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|
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So here's hoping that more developers will join in on the iSCSI target |
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project listed below at ardistech.com. There's definitely something |
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brewing here which will make SAN's a whole lot cheaper and easier to |
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implement for the average environment. Give it some more development |
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time and it will actually be viable! |
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|
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Bryn |
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|
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|
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On Apr 15, 2004, at 6:48 PM, Bryn Hughes wrote: |
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|
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> I'm looking for experiences implementing iSCSI on Linux - not just as |
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> an initiator but as a target as well. I've found these two projects: |
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> |
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> This is the iSCSI initiator project started by Cisco |
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> http://sourceforge.net/projects/linux-iscsi |
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> |
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> This is the ardistech iSCSI target project |
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> http://www.ardistech.com/iscsi/ |
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> |
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> In theory it is possible to create iSCSI volumes using EVMS or similar |
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> and then mount them as block devices over ethernet to another host |
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> (could be Windows, Novell, Linux, OS X, whatever). Basically you can |
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> build yourself a SAN using free software and normal ethernet |
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> (obviously gigabit preferred). |
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-- |
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~ |
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~ |
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:wq |