iSCSI

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LittleMe

2[H]4U
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Feb 20, 2001
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Anybody have experience setting up an iSCSI SAN? I'm not talking about purchasing one, but more or less building one. What software are you using? Is your target a *nix box or Windows? What switch are you using and what network cards? I'm doing some testing and currently I have an HP ProCurve 1800-24G and 2 Intel Pro/1000 PT Quad Port Server Adapters. I'm going to team the the 4 cards in each box. I've already setup the card in my workstation, and teamed it using 802.3ad. Just need to figure out what software to use and setup the other box.
 
1. openfiler
2. freenas
3. or linux with iSCSI target

very good RAID controllers and enterprise HDD (10k rpm 16 mb buffer), etc
@ windows you should download iSCSI initiator (vista has integrated)

and storage must be separated from the LAN/WAN
with that switch you have VLAN
 
It'd be very nice if you posted your results and experience here. I am curious about that myself.
 
if you go for low budget SAN:
for example:
a box (server) running openfiler with gb fiber NIC (intel)
and HDD 15ksas
i prefer hp/dell/ibm/supermicro

AND

enterprise switch
CISCO/JUNIPER/NORTEL/HP/FOUNDRY/3com

and good cables
for copper go this cat7


and at the initiator box's intel nic gb coper/fiber
if you can go with dual for redundancy

put in a isolated network
no access from outside network for security

or buy a hp storage server with win 2k3 storage appliance for ~5K $
 
LittleMe said:
Anybody have experience setting up an iSCSI SAN? I'm not talking about purchasing one, but more or less building one. What software are you using? Is your target a *nix box or Windows? What switch are you using and what network cards? I'm doing some testing and currently I have an HP ProCurve 1800-24G and 2 Intel Pro/1000 PT Quad Port Server Adapters. I'm going to team the the 4 cards in each box. I've already setup the card in my workstation, and teamed it using 802.3ad. Just need to figure out what software to use and setup the other box.
Click to expand...

What's this going to be used for? Why do you think iscsi is a good match for your application as opposed to NFS or CIFS?

I built a Solaris-based iscsi server. It was a dual p3 with a dual port Broadcom 570x ethernet controller and 2 gigs of ram, and I used a cheap Netgear switch. Performance was pretty decent for the money I put into it - 300 megabits per second consistently, very definitely CPU limited. Even iperf only got up to 400 or 500 mbps.

I haven't tried this setup with more recent hardware, unfortunately. I would anticipate good performance out of it, though. And using ZFS for your storage will make your life much easier. It's by far the easiest filesystem/disk management tool to administer that I've run across.
 
I'm doing it more to play around with. I already have the network cards and switch. I'm running CAT6 for the cable. The box I'll be using as a target is an old AMD FX-60 box I have laying around with 2GB of memory. I already have some drives here to use, just 4 500GB's for the time being. I also have an 8 port SATA RAID PCI-E card for the array. I was thinking of using openfiler as well, or setting up IET on ubuntu. I was also looking at StarWind on a Windows Server box.

I've already got the switch setup with 8 ports set aside for the iSCSI setup. Jumbo Frames and Flow Control are enabled on the iSCSI VLAN as well.
 
LittleMe said:
I'm doing it more to play around with. I already have the network cards and switch. I'm running CAT6 for the cable. The box I'll be using as a target is an old AMD FX-60 box I have laying around with 2GB of memory. I already have some drives here to use, just 4 500GB's for the time being. I also have an 8 port SATA RAID PCI-E card for the array. I was thinking of using openfiler as well, or setting up IET on ubuntu. I was also looking at StarWind on a Windows Server box.

I've already got the switch setup with 8 ports set aside for the iSCSI setup. Jumbo Frames and Flow Control are enabled on the iSCSI VLAN as well.
Click to expand...

right way
my opinion: openfiler/freenas

send here photos, perfomances
R/W
 
I've moved a little along on this project, but not much. I setup an 03R2 server box and put the personal version of StarWind on it. The box is nothing special as I'm only wanting to test the software. The box is a 3GHz P4 with a gig of memory and an onboard 100Mb NIC. I've got a 10Gig image mounted and I'm trying to get CHAP working but I can connect to it with no security just fine. Screenshot below of it pushing a massive 100Mbps. If I can get CHAP to actually work correctly, I may just stick with this and not use OpenFiler.

 
LittleMe said:
I've moved a little along on this project, but not much. I setup an 03R2 server box and put the personal version of StarWind on it. The box is nothing special as I'm only wanting to test the software. The box is a 3GHz P4 with a gig of memory and an onboard 100Mb NIC. I've got a 10Gig image mounted and I'm trying to get CHAP working but I can connect to it with no security just fine. Screenshot below of it pushing a massive 100Mbps. If I can get CHAP to actually work correctly, I may just stick with this and not use OpenFiler.

Click to expand...

software initiator eats 300-600MHz of CPU's speed i mean for ms win initiator
StarWind?
 
I actually tested it and didn't notice a hit beyond 1-2% CPU usage with the MS Initiator. The 21% usage in the screenshot is actually a video I was converting for my iPhone. I just limited it to my fourth core.

Link to StarWind
 
Arg, problems. If I enable Jumbo Frames, my performance drops to around 670Mbps. If I disable Jumbo Frames, I get around 950Mbps. I'm still can't get the link to hit anything beyond using a single card. Creating a RAM disk in StarWind and writing to it, I hit around 580Mbps (~72.5MB/s) which is pretty low.

Anybody got any ideas?
 
Are you sure the aggregation is working? What does Iperf show? Any diagnostics for that on the switch, maybe? Does it behave differently with crossover cables instead of the switch, or is the switch necessary? I'm not familiar enough with 802.3ad to know...
 
Well, can't really check to see if it's working or not now. I came home to find the computer I'd put my second card into for testing off. I can't get it to boot with the card installed now. It's an Intel board with a C2D 1.8, 2GB of DDR2, and on-board video. I used the x16 PCI-E slot for the NIC but nothing I do will make it boot with that card in now. Not sure if the card is dead yet, so I'll need to find that out and actually put together the box I was going to use as the server.
 
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