From owner-freebsd-geom@FreeBSD.ORG Wed Nov 22 06:16:12 2006 Return-Path: X-Original-To: freebsd-geom@freebsd.org Delivered-To: freebsd-geom@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [69.147.83.52]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id C5B6416A407 for ; Wed, 22 Nov 2006 06:16:12 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from paul+fbsd@it.ca) Received: from mail2.dm.egate.net (mail2.dm.egate.net [216.235.1.136]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 97CB243D49 for ; Wed, 22 Nov 2006 06:15:43 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from paul+fbsd@it.ca) Received: from mail.it.ca (root@[216.235.7.67]) by mail2.dm.egate.net (8.12.11/8.12.11) with ESMTP id kAM6G9IO030182 for ; Wed, 22 Nov 2006 01:16:09 -0500 (EST) Received: from mail.it.ca (paul@mail [216.235.7.67]) by mail.it.ca (8.13.3/8.13.3) with ESMTP id kAM6G7bA074223 for ; Wed, 22 Nov 2006 01:16:09 -0500 (EST) (envelope-from paul+fbsd@it.ca) Received: (from paul@localhost) by mail.it.ca (8.13.3/8.13.3/Submit) id kAM6G7CA074222 for freebsd-geom@freebsd.org; Wed, 22 Nov 2006 01:16:07 -0500 (EST) (envelope-from paul+fbsd@it.ca) X-Authentication-Warning: mail.it.ca: paul set sender to paul+fbsd@it.ca using -f Date: Wed, 22 Nov 2006 01:16:07 -0500 From: Paul Chvostek To: freebsd-geom@freebsd.org Message-ID: <20061122061606.GA56653@it.ca> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.12-2006-07-14 Subject: geom_fox and isp ... or something else? X-BeenThere: freebsd-geom@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: GEOM-specific discussions and implementations List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Wed, 22 Nov 2006 06:16:12 -0000 Hiya. ${DAYJOB} has a long history with Novell. In the epic battle I wage for acceptance of FreeBSD alongside SLES, multipathing has come up. We have a nifty new SAN. We have multipathing-capable drivers for Windows. We have instructions from Novell on how to set up multipathing in SLES (though some list traffic that suggests that Qlogic behaviour is less than stellar). I've been able to wheedle a pair of Qlogic cards (purchased because corporate standards are more important than verifying a product's usefulness) connected to a box for testing. The SAN is insanely fast, but of course multipathing doesn't work. I've seen Pawel's GEOM_ROME tease from early 2004. While I'd love to have a "full, finished multipathing implementation", I'd also happily stick with geom_fox with whatever hardware combination or custom hacks are required, if I could just get it to pass a link failure test. I'm seeing the same behaviour as has been noted -- if the link goes down, isp doesn't notice, so no failover happens. When the link is down, the system grinds to a halt waiting for the disk to be available. I've found old freebsd-geom posts (Poul, Pawel, Andrew) that mention isp driver problems and potential patches, but if somebody's written a fix, I can't find it. Does it exist? If Qlogic adapters are a no-go (because I can neither write nor fund the required fix), has someone gotten FC multipathing to work with Adaptec or LSI adapters? *Is* there a way to get fibre-channel multipathing working, so this expensive SAN can be used with an OS more robust than Windows? - 6.1-RELEASE - isp0, isp1 - ispfw - /dev/da1 through /dev/da8 (paths) - geom_fox gives me /dev/da8.fox I am in a position to test things. Thanks. :) p -- Paul Chvostek