> Can Spectrum Scale (GPFS) be used as the disk to install z/VM? Implementing a hardware-based FCP target on Linux on Intel or Windows is possible (the code for Linux is in the iscsi-support package for specific Qlogic brand FCP adapters on Intel), but I suspect it would take some development on the hardware microcode in the FCP adapter on Z that touches some stuff that IBM doesn't want to make public about the adapter to make it work efficiently enough in the Z world to be viable (FCP cards generally have some kind of TCP offload to the hardware in the adapter). Backing that host with the special adapter by an existing Linux/Unix or Windows filesystem on the Intel hardware, performance would be a question of the hardware running the FCP target software and the underlying filesystem. GPFS is pretty good at handling high-performance parallel I/O (the high-performance computing guys do this kind of thing all the time) so it's not a totally crazy idea, but you'd probably need some majorly beefy Intel hardware to do a reasonable job of it at the moment. Work out how the fiber switch connections work for an Intel box with the right hardware adapters, connect it to your FCP SAN, configure some FCP targets and it's a DIY solution that can support the filesystem of your choice. Alan's comparison to SVC is an apt one.
Wishlist item: a version of the FCP adapter for Z that had an iSCSI client as well as FCP support; everything seems to be moving in that direction and it's not like IBM or others haven't done something like it before for the RISC world - kind of an ICC-like thing for disk. It might need to be beefier to support the adapter iSCSI client IP stack and probably wouldn't be production-level performance, but the chips to do it already exist and can take advantage of economies of scale effects - look at how iSCSI has exploded in the Intel world. It would be a cool thing to not have to care who makes your storage hardware or where it's located any more, even if it's relatively low performance storage: it's just IP packets at that point. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For LINUX-390 subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO LINUX-390 or visit http://www2.marist.edu/htbin/wlvindex?LINUX-390
