saqmaster wrote: > This is my first post and i'm new to Solaris (not completely, but > effectively). I'm planning my new iSCSI SAN and i'm evaluating various > products. > > Right now i'm looking at :- > > - OpenFiler on generic x86 hardware and a bunch of sata disks > - FreeNAS, as above > > and now.. > > - OpenSolaris+ZFS+generic hw+bunch of sata disks > > Basically my requirement is to throw 10 SATA disks in a generic box > and present the LUNs via iSCSI primarily to a vmware esxi host. I > haven't sorted the motherboard out yet nor the disk controllers, so > any recommendations would be appreciated. I will check the HCL though! > This is just for home, so no server-grade stuff! > > As far as performance goes, I appreciate i'm not going to get the same > as I have at the moment with my file server and its DAS > (300-500MB/sec), but I am wondering if it's possible to trunk iSCSI > interfaces (normal NICs) on Solaris? I'm thinking that 2gbps will be > adequate. >
You can aggregate Ethernet; however this may not deliver the performance you expect. If you take 4x 1Gbps links and aggregate them you won't have a single 4Gbps link in the traditional sense... rather, you'll have 4 links over which traffic is balanced. If you have only a single TCP stream you'll still be limited to the throughput of a single link. For the purposes of iSCSI this may be overcome by using multiple-sessions, though I haven't tested this. > I'm a little confused though. There appears to be an iSCSI target > project (albeit notes last updated last year I think), and the COMSTAR > project (which i'm not sure if iSCSI support is ready(?) yet).. > > Should I be using iSCSI target support in Nevada, or COMSTAR? > Its confusing, I know. The existing iSCSI Target Project is integrated into Solaris and will continue to be supported for quite some time going forward... however, COMSTAR is a much broader scoped project that has the ability to implement a new iSCSI Target implementation that may prove vastly superior to the existing one... therefore, for all intents and purposes, they are in competition and duplicate. (I believe that as much of the existing code will be reused if possible.) The COMSTAR iSCSI Target isn't here today, and looks to be some ways off, thus its not really of concern. In a year I'd guess we'll start looking at transitioning from the old (existing) to the new. As for the general idea of using Solaris+ZFS as opposed to OpenFiler/FreeNAS, I think you'd be very happy with it. You loose the nifty GUI, but you pick up a lot more functionality including: * Snapshot capability * Clone and replication capability * End-to-End data checksumming * Superior caching (ZFS ARC) * Fine-grained quota support * Built-in Compression On top of that, data sharing is integral. Exporting a volume via iSCSI is as easy as using the command "zfs set shareiscsi=on pool/myfilesystem". CIFS and NFS are just as easy! OpenFiler and FreeNAS do an excellent job of combining the best elements of the Linux/BSD storage solutions into a single integrated platform... but your still using a mish-mash of technologies (LVM or EVMS or LinuxRAID, plus ext3 or XFS or JFS or ReiserStabStabFS, plus ....). ZFS brings much of this into a single software solution and then provides hooks for things that can't be integrated like iSCSI/NFS/CIFS(Samba) support. Compression for instance, is integrated into ZFS, whereas many Linux/BSD solutions use loopback or FUSE supply it. Right now about the only thing you get via a loopback style solution that isn't integrated into ZFS is encryption support.... but thats in code review now and will be available soon! All ZFS is missing is a pretty web interface with add-on functionality..... stay tuned, there are rumors that Sun's FishWorks project may fix that very soon. :) Does that help you out? Want me to elaborate on this more? benr. _______________________________________________ storage-discuss mailing list [email protected] http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/storage-discuss
