Replacing iSCSI with FiberChannel

[extide]

Some Background: I have the ZFS storage box (Hive in sig), which has a storage volume exposed via a ZVOL through iSCSI. Then I use the MS iSCSI initiator on my Windows 2008R2 box(Mind in sig) to mount up that volume and use it. I currently have a single GigE link directly connected between the two machines, in addition to each machines' regular LAN connections. The iSCSI goes over that dedicated link.

Now, I was thinking about moving to FiberChannel to connect the boxes. This is partly for fun and largely so I can learn about this stuff a bit more. (Infact learning was one of the main reasons I ended up with this ZFS + iSCSI setup in the first place).

My question: Is it really just as simple as buying two FC HBA's and hooking them up, and then I can basically make the ZVOL that is currently going over iSCSI go over the FiberChannel instead? That almost seems like it would be too easy. For example, you can buy a pair of FC cards on Ebay for like $130, plus some fiber cables with LC connectors, which I may already have, I will have to check. For that kind of price it seems like this could be a fun little learning project that could net me some nice gains in performance also. Since these cards each have Dual 1Gb/2Gb/4Gb FC transceivers, I could theoretically use two cables and get an ~8Gbit link, correct?

EDIT: To add to this, I guess mainly I am curious about what sort of software I will need on each end to make this work. Is there something analogous to the iscsitarget software for the linux box, and likewise for the initiator on the windows box?

 

[KENNYB]

Ahhh... Not that I would know anything about that, but if you need help I can ask some "people".
I emailed said people.

 

[extide]

Sure. Looks like you can get single-transceiver 4gb cards for like $35 or so. I will probably pick up a pair of those at some point.

 

[KENNYB]

I've asked. Actually I copy/pasted you entire question and sig.
This will have to wait until Monday. But tech support is going to be free.

 

[patrickdk]

You generally will need a 4gb fc or faster card in your zfs box for this to work.

You will need no special config, luns are shared between iscsi and fc, assuming you allowed both to use it.

Finally, if you install mpio on your windows box, and tell it to use roundrobin, yes, it will use both connections.

 

[extide]

I will probably just go with single transceiver cards as they are really cheap. Also since I want PCI-e cards, it seems like they start out at 4Gb. The 8Gb cards are super expensive, way way more so even than the dual 4Gb cards.

Ooh, I am kinda excited, this looks like it will be a fun project

 

[patrickdk]

hmm, didn't realize you where on linux. iscsitarget is the simple iet driver. You need to switch to either LIO or SCST for fc target support.

On windows, there is nothing needed, windows will detect the fc drive no issue, you only need to install the mpio feature if you want to add multipath support (requires reboot)

 

[vr.]

Sticking with iSCSI gets my vote. 10 GbE cards seem reasonable and a little faster than the FC cards. Plus I've sat through storage meetings with Dell, EMC, IBM and NetApp over the past year and all of them said they and their customers are moving away from FC.