From owner-freebsd-stable@FreeBSD.ORG Sat Sep 16 11:52:10 2006 Return-Path: X-Original-To: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org Delivered-To: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 4BA5716A403 for ; Sat, 16 Sep 2006 11:52:10 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from rblayzor@inoc.net) Received: from mx1-a.inoc.net (mx1-a.inoc.net [64.246.131.30]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id CADAF43D53 for ; Sat, 16 Sep 2006 11:52:09 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from rblayzor@inoc.net) Received: from [172.16.16.54] (cpe-24-29-66-248.nycap.res.rr.com [24.29.66.248]) by mx1-a.inoc.net (build v6.3.3) with ESMTP id 78793714 for multiple; Sat, 16 Sep 2006 11:52:08 +0000 (UTC) Message-ID: <450BE564.20106@inoc.net> Date: Sat, 16 Sep 2006 07:52:04 -0400 From: Robert Blayzor Organization: Independent Network Operations Consortium, LLC User-Agent: Thunderbird 1.5.0.5 (Macintosh/20060719) MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Matthew Jacob References: <450B62C9.5000706@inoc.net> <7579f7fb0609152252y5660195fo419a67dbe90904cd@mail.gmail.com> In-Reply-To: <7579f7fb0609152252y5660195fo419a67dbe90904cd@mail.gmail.com> X-Enigmail-Version: 0.94.1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Cc: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org Subject: Re: iSCSI HBAs X-BeenThere: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: Production branch of FreeBSD source code List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Sat, 16 Sep 2006 11:52:10 -0000 Matthew Jacob wrote: > Why do you think an iSCSI HBA would be of any benefit to anything > other than the target mode side as a server? Mostly for deploying servers that are diskless, quickly. No need to depend on another server (other than the iSCSI target) to get servers up without a lot of fusing around. Diskless + the software initiator seems like a lot of fusing around to get one server up. I mean I could be wrong, I'm not really sure how the FreeBSD software initiator works or if it's actual optimized and stable. If it's as easy as setting up a DHCP and TFTP server just to boot the kernel, then mount the iSCSI volume, that might be an option. But right now, if an iSCSI HBA driver was available it might be the more reliable way to go. Again, I could be way off base. We use FreeBSD in all of our server clusters now, most via RAID1 mirrors on every server, I'd like to stay with FreeBSD, but sometimes it's lack of support for new server beneficial drivers make that choice hard to make. -- Robert Blayzor, BOFH INOC, LLC rblayzor\@(inoc.net|gmail.com) PGP: 0x66F90BFC @ http://pgp.mit.edu Key fingerprint = 6296 F715 038B 44C1 2720 292A 8580 500E 66F9 0BFC One picture is worth 128K words.