[CentOS] connecting 2 servers using an FC card via iSCSI

Ross Walker rswwalker at gmail.com
Thu Mar 19 03:34:49 UTC 2009


On Mar 18, 2009, at 6:56 PM, Erick Perez <eaperezh at gmail.com> wrote:

> Nate, Ross. Thanks for the information. I now understand the  
> difference.
>
> Ross: I cant ditch MSSS since it is a government purchase, so I  
> *must* use it until something breaks and budget is assigned and  
> maybe in 2 years we can buy something else. the previous boss  
> purchased this equipment and i guess an HP EVA, Netapp or some other  
> sort of NAS/SAN equipment was better suited for the job...but go  
> figure!.
>
> Nate: The whole idea is to use the MSSServer and connect serveral  
> servers to it. it has 5 available slots so a bunch of cards can be  
> placed there.
>
> I think (after reading your comments) that i can install 2 dual port  
> 10gb netcards in the MSSS, configure it for jumbo frames (9k) and  
> then put 10gb netcards on the servers that will connect to this MSSS  
> and also enable 9k frames. All this of course, connected to a good  
> 10gb switch with a good backplane. Im currently using 1Gb so  
> switching to fiber at 1Gb will not provide a lot of gain.
>
> using IOMeter we saw that we will not incurr in IOWait due to slow  
> hard disks.
>
> we just cant trash the MSSS....sorry Ross.

Well I understand where your coming from. If you can't get rid of  
MSSS, but you can leverage it's strengths by serving CIFS shares and  
other Windows services while feeding it the FC storage from Linux host  
via 10Gbe iSCSI.

While Microsoft's iSCSI initiator is very good, I can't say the same  
about their target which is 25-33% slower then IET target on CentOS.  
Probably has to do with running file based targets off of NTFS  
partitions instead of the raw disks. You could run another target on  
it, but I don't think Redmond would support that.

-Ross




More information about the CentOS mailing list