On Mon, 14 Jul 2003, Roger B.A Klorese wrote: > > iSCSI has nothing to do with hardware. iSCSI is "Internet SCSI". > > It's SCSI over Internet. On Linux you can easily use > > 'hdc=ide-scsi' or > > some such, but I doubt that's necessary. With iSCSI, hardware doesn't > > really enter into the equation, anyway -- it's just providing a block > > device over the internet, using a variation of the SCSI protocol. The > > source of the block device shouldn't matter. > > Don't you consider actually having storage hardware that can speak iSCSI to > be a hardware issue?
Hmm. No. That's like saying CIFS is a hardware issue because that box (really just a glorified general purpose machine running Samba) speaks CIFS. Like CIFS, iSCSI is a protocol. Whether it's done in hardware or software is irrelevant to the desired outcome. And to get really technical, it's not "done" in hardware, it's software that runs on firmware. ;-) SCSI is often termed a 'hardware' thing, and in that respect (unlike iSCSI), that's probably close to it's real-world usage. The idea /behind/ iSCSI is very different from SCSI, however. To be able to "speak" SCSI over TCP/IP (or is it UDP or something else entirely?) is nice, but SCSI is really just about variations on some really basic operations: - get information (size, blocksize, blah blah) - read block - store block Everything else is basically a variation on one of these three (there may be a fourth -- I'm not sure). True, SCSI is mighty complex, but the whole idea of doing iSCSI is that it shouldn't matter what the *real* storage mechanisms are, only so long as the software that hosts the iSCSI protocol can read and write to it in a meaningful way. Thusly, iSCSI becomes a glorified Network Block Device (although probably more useful than that.) Of course, I might be wrong. I often am, and while I don't relish it, I do appreciate being shown where I'm wrong. ;-) -- No more monkey ducks, jumping on the bed! Jon Nelson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> C and Python Code Gardener ------------------------------------------------------- This SF.Net email sponsored by: Parasoft Error proof Web apps, automate testing & more. Download & eval WebKing and get a free book. www.parasoft.com/bulletproofapps1 _______________________________________________ courier-users mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe: https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/courier-users
