Just had another thought about this. One of the benefits of RAID-Z is meant to be the low calculation overhead. Could the ZFS code be ported straight into the iSCSI client? Also, if the iSCSI client knows how to save the data to multiple places, do you actually need anything configured on the iSCSI server end?
Ok, for disaster recovery and rebuilding purposes it would be helpful to have the storage device able to take care of that. But it's not strictly necessary for this to work. In addition to the obvious network benefit of reducing redundant data transmitted over the wire, you're also distributing the raid calculations across your servers. So you don't need one powerful dedicated raid controller, and you don't need dedicated NIC's for the storage network (although those would still be beneficial for rebuilding). By putting it in the iSCSI client, you also remove the requirement for all the devices to be identical, making disaster recovery a lot easier if you ever have old equipment fail. No need to source obsolete parts, you can simply drop any new iSCSI box in it's place. Surely it can't be this simple? This message posted from opensolaris.org _______________________________________________ storage-discuss mailing list [email protected] http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/storage-discuss
