Date: Tue, 28 Sep 2004 23:47:44 -0400 From: Forrest Aldrich <forrie@forrie.com> To: freebsd-scsi@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Status of iSCSI Message-ID: <415A3060.1060402@forrie.com>
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[Scott, sorry about the bounced mail - it was an old IP block I had, it's fixed now.] I'm working on a project that requires a scalable mail store, which is poised to support 25k users initially, but scale to 100's of thousands of users. The budget won't provide for a SAN right now; iSCSI is a little new, but unfortunately it's not supported in FreeBSD at this time. I've been looking into the storage market areas specifically of Linux and/vs FreeBSD. A Linux/NAS/iSCSI model and that of a FreeBSD/NAS/NFS model -- not sure we want to do direct storage at this time, if we did, we'd need to plan how that purchased hardware would fit into a larger plan. NAS has the advantage of being independent; some have their own OS and most have redundancies in place. I'm not sure if it's possible to dual-attach Linux or FreeBSD boxes to a FC fabric; a while ago, that wasn't possible. The front-end servers will be split up into scalable groups - ie: some servers doing SpamAssassin, some antivirus, some MTA-in and MTA-out, etc. The common denomenator, and driving factor of this design, is the backend mail store. I'd like to explore what (realistic) options FreeBSD may have here - as I dread the thought of Linux-anything in this scenario. All input/feedback welcomed. Forrest There was an implementation done by Lucent last year for 4.x, but it has a sticky license and is probably out of date. I and several others see iSCSI as something that really needs to get done, but the 3-4 months of development time is more than can be done on evenings and weekends. I would also want to do it 'right' and implement new infrastructure in CAM to accompany it rather than making it monolithic like the Lucent implementation. What kind of project do you need it for, and what kind of resources do you have right now? Scott Forrest Aldrich wrote: > I read the April 2004 report (on freebsd.org); presuming that's > up-to-date, it may be a while before we have iSCSI support in FreeBSD. > I wanted to verify here, etc. > > I'm involved in a project that will require something of that nature. > > > Thanks, > Forrest >
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