From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Thu Jun 10 14:53:37 2004 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 5363816A4CE for ; Thu, 10 Jun 2004 14:53:37 +0000 (GMT) Received: from dan.emsphone.com (dan.emsphone.com [199.67.51.101]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 01A4243D48 for ; Thu, 10 Jun 2004 14:53:37 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from dan@dan.emsphone.com) Received: (from dan@localhost) by dan.emsphone.com (8.12.10/8.12.10) id i5AEqkBo059562; Thu, 10 Jun 2004 09:52:46 -0500 (CDT) (envelope-from dan) Date: Thu, 10 Jun 2004 09:52:45 -0500 From: Dan Nelson To: Joe Schmoe Message-ID: <20040610145245.GA16729@dan.emsphone.com> References: <20040610024934.12211.qmail@web53306.mail.yahoo.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <20040610024934.12211.qmail@web53306.mail.yahoo.com> X-OS: FreeBSD 5.2-CURRENT X-message-flag: Outlook Error User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.6i cc: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: FreeBSD use for SANs ?? Reasonable ? X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.1 Precedence: list List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Thu, 10 Jun 2004 14:53:37 -0000 In the last episode (Jun 09), Joe Schmoe said: > What is the world of SAN on FreeBSD like ? Does it exist at all ? There are working fibre-channel drivers for Qlogic and LSI Logic adapters. For the short time I had a test BSD box on our SAN, it performed very nicely. There are no failover or load-balancing capabilities, though. At some point, I hope geom will grow that ability. > More specifically, are there _any_ iSCSI drivers in existence for > FreeBSD ? That's a slightly different question :) I know of two people that claimed to be working on it, but they never announced anything. > If so, how exactly does it work in terms of reallocating storage ? > If I have a large iSCSI disk array, and I have a fbsd server that > suddenly needs more space, how do I expand the partitions already in > use ? Wouldn't I need to unmount the existing partition and resize > it on the array and then remount it ? Or do people just keep adding > more and more discreet partitions from the array as time goes on, > ending up with a fbsd server with serveral mounted filesystems that > were needed over time ? You can grow filesytems by dismounting the volume, growing the slice with fdisk, then running growfs on the filesytem, and remounting. Or you can add another filesystem, which might be better if your backup system does separate filesystems in parallel. If a 500gb volume takes 4 hours to back up, two 250's will only take 2 if you've got 2 tape drives. Depends on your setup. -- Dan Nelson dnelson@allantgroup.com