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Old 09-14-2005, 07:04 PM   #1
Rinish
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Linux iSCSI


Hi
Can I use The Linux iSCSI with Cisco 2600 series router?

The Linux iSCSI driver acts as an iSCSI protocol initiator to transport SCSI requests and responses over an IP network
The document say only about Cisco SN 5428-2 storage router.

Any ideas or help is appreciated.

Thanks,
Rinish (rinishriju)
 
Old 09-15-2005, 03:35 AM   #2
xavpaice
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The 26xx routers are part of the TCP/IP network, not an end point. The Cisco 26xx series routers won't act as an iSCSI device as such - you need something like an IBM DS300 or the Cisco iSCSI router you mention.

Storage routers have FiberChannel in one end, iSCSI out the other, or SCSI one end and iSCSI out the other... you get the picture. The 2600 is just a network router - TCP/IP, layer 3, no more (well a bit but not storage).

You could make your own Linux based storage router...
 
Old 09-15-2005, 04:01 AM   #3
Rinish
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How can I make my own Linux based storage router? I know how to forward packets using Linux...
does that has to do something with this?

/ Rinish
 
Old 09-15-2005, 04:34 AM   #4
xavpaice
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Wink

if you want to build a linux box to do the job of a storage device, you'll need to write in the smarts to do the ACL's etc that a real storage device can do. If you want to build a storage router with FC one end and iSCSI the other, you're going to need to write a custom app to route that. Linux's IP routing is just that - IP. FC is not IP, it's more SCSI. iSCSI is not SCSI, it's SCSI in a FedEx box.

I guess it comes down to what you want to achieve - in my experience if there's one big mother of a host with a ton of fast disk, and I want to share that out, NFS is the simplest way to do it and in many ways its faster and also allows multiple hosts to access the same partition (think cluster). I know many (Linux and AIX) Oracle RAC clusters using NFS with NetApp filers. No reason you couldn't use Linux as your NAS device, but you might not get the performance on x86 platform. Better on IBM pSeries or zSeries.

If however you want to centralise storage, boot from that central storage, have the storage processor separate from the hosts, then you're talking SAN of some sort, and it's miles cheaper to buy a NetApp or IBM DS300 to do that rather than spend weeks (and my rates are $$$) attempting to get something going. You probably want to use iSCSI HBA's for that in any case.

I don't think there are any commercial or GPL iSCSI storage devices that you can build onto Linux out there (yet) but someone's bound to do it at some stage. Just keep on looking.... I understand NetApp actually use Linux at the back end but that's just a rumour you didn't hear from me

Am I waffling? What did you actually want to do here? A normal TCP/IP router (Cisco, Linux, Allied Telesyn, etc) will route TCP/IP packets, including iSCSI, SMTP, SSH, whatever. iSCSI just sits in the pile with all the others.
 
Old 09-16-2005, 12:58 PM   #5
MrMichaelWill
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Quote:
Originally posted by Rinish
How can I make my own Linux based storage router? I know how to forward packets using Linux...
does that has to do something with this?

/ Rinish
The question is: What exactly is the problem you are trying to solve:

1. You have fibre channel attached storage and want to allow a linux machine to use iSCSI to
access it.

For that you can either buy a storage router like the one you mentioned, or you build a linux
box that has fibre channel cards and acts as a iSCSI gateway between the FC and your
remote hosts accessing you via ethernet.

The question is, does linux have the necessary drivers to act as an iSCSI target?

2. You have a linux machine attached ethernet switches and want to buy storage that
you can acess via the iSCSI driver. One company we are looking at for that is http://equalogic.com/

3. You have one or several linux and windows machines and want to buy cheap storage for it that
you want to access on a file level.

You can buy a linux box with several drives in a raid5 or so, and export it via NFS through gigabit ethernet.
You then do not need iSCSI.

4. You have machines that you want to boot diskless off of iSCSI via ethernet

Then you might consider the alternative to boot them via PXE through the ethernet and have the
bootimage nfs mount again from a simple NFS server, again not involving iSCSI at all.

Michael
 
Old 09-16-2005, 01:03 PM   #6
MrMichaelWill
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If you go with 1., check out http://iscsitarget.sourceforge.net/ which is an open source project for
exactly that: exporting blocks via iSCSI. That is the counterpart to iSCSI initiators that can
connect to iSCSI targets.

Michael Will
Quote:
Originally posted by MrMichaelWill
The question is: What exactly is the problem you are trying to solve:

1. You have fibre channel attached storage and want to allow a linux machine to use iSCSI to
access it.

For that you can either buy a storage router like the one you mentioned, or you build a linux
box that has fibre channel cards and acts as a iSCSI gateway between the FC and your
remote hosts accessing you via ethernet.

The question is, does linux have the necessary drivers to act as an iSCSI target?

2. You have a linux machine attached ethernet switches and want to buy storage that
you can acess via the iSCSI driver. One company we are looking at for that is http://equalogic.com/

3. You have one or several linux and windows machines and want to buy cheap storage for it that
you want to access on a file level.

You can buy a linux box with several drives in a raid5 or so, and export it via NFS through gigabit ethernet.
You then do not need iSCSI.

4. You have machines that you want to boot diskless off of iSCSI via ethernet

Then you might consider the alternative to boot them via PXE through the ethernet and have the
bootimage nfs mount again from a simple NFS server, again not involving iSCSI at all.

Michael
 
  


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