From owner-freebsd-stable@FreeBSD.ORG Wed Apr 8 14:12:38 2009 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [IPv6:2001:4f8:fff6::34]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 933B9106566B for ; Wed, 8 Apr 2009 14:12:38 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from rblayzor.bulk@inoc.net) Received: from mail1.albyny.inoc.net (mail1.albyny.inoc.net [64.22.32.71]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 3FF588FC0A for ; Wed, 8 Apr 2009 14:12:38 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from rblayzor.bulk@inoc.net) DomainKey-Signature: a=rsa-sha1; q=dns; c=nofws; s=beta; d=inoc.net; h=Received:From:To:Subject:Date; b=1a6wV2WxZCcO9ZnDgosBXFYYUwq7ygJZ7tE0pt0x9kzWtAGgwsYv8emGOdtiolLKu3zMORzS4C0S1RH2lh48fEZr2lGDrbfCsuEyaNn8wOoX6o4HyzkTNPR7rKllyVmCElbNZ+ZkxObHjjAtL9rSiXO9A6iIejBACp2/pZ8jweM=; Received: from void.ops.inoc.net (vanguard.noc.albyny.inoc.net [64.246.135.8]) by mail1.albyny.inoc.net (build v9.2.12) with ESMTP id 1220236-1941382 for multiple; Wed, 08 Apr 2009 13:56:28 +0000 (UTC) Message-Id: <2C0AE775-B15B-4B56-A915-6E126F25C8B0@inoc.net> From: Robert Blayzor To: Garance A Drosihn In-Reply-To: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed; delsp=yes Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Mime-Version: 1.0 (Apple Message framework v930.3) Date: Wed, 8 Apr 2009 09:56:28 -0400 References: X-Mailer: Apple Mail (2.930.3) Cc: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org Subject: Re: FreeBSD and iSCSI for disks. 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: Wed, 08 Apr 2009 14:12:39 -0000 On Apr 7, 2009, at 5:43 PM, Garance A Drosihn wrote: > Some friends of mine are looking at the new "DroboPro", which makes a > lot of disk space available via iSCSI (in addition to firewire 800), > and they were wondering how well iSCSI works with FreeBSD. I haven't > paid attention to iSCSI support. Is there anyone using it heavily > for disk-storage under FreeBSD? Has there been much changed for > iSCSI support in the 8.x branch, or is 7.x support working fine? If you're looking for "production ready" iSCSI initiator support in FreeBSD, do yourself a favor, save some time, and look into something else. Seriously, we went down this road just recently testing both FreeBSD 7.0/7.1 amd64 on various Dell servers with Intel (em) Gig-E NIC's and it was very easy to basically get the box to lock up solid and/or panic. Our targets were both Netapp and Equallogic iSCSI SAN's. We didn't have a lot of time to debug it, our setup was pretty simple.. yet when we tried to run various simulated real world load on it the boxes just caved. Even with jumbo frames enabled on the NIC's the performance was mediocre at best. Unfortunately due a time constraint we had to move the clients to CentOS 5.2/5.3 and things have been very good so far. I was hoping that FreeBSD's iSCSI support was a bit more solid, or at least hoping that the (isp) driver had support for the QLogic iSCSI HBA's... no luck. YMMV -- Robert Blayzor, BOFH INOC, LLC rblayzor@inoc.net http://www.inoc.net/~rblayzor/