Re: QLogic Fibre Channel HBA Support

[Steve Traugott <stevegt@TerraLuna.Org>]

On Sun, Jul 04, 2004 at 10:11:38AM +0100, Ian Pratt wrote:
> 
> > Still hunting for better alternatives vs. NFS roots -- does anyone know
> > what I'd need to do to get the driver for QLogic fibre HBA's working, so
> > I can host VBD's from a SAN?  
> 
> If there's a driver in Linux, it should just work if you use the
> unstable-xeno tree and modify the config for the domain 0 linux
> to add the driver. 

So, how stable is unstable these days?  I.E. would you trust it to host
other people's guests?

> In the new tree, rather than using our own virtual disk code we're
> planning on using standard Linux's standard LVM2 code to enable
> physical partitions to be sliced and diced. The tool support for
> this isn't quite there yet.

That sounds good -- you mean tools support as in python?  I should be
able to help if that's the case.

> An alternative to using a FCAL SAN is to use iSCSI. I've found
> that the Linux Cisco iSCSI initiator code works nicely, and can
> either talk to a hardware iSCSI target or to the Ardistech Linux
> iSCSI s/w target. I've generally configured it such that the
> domain talks iSCSI directly (using an initrd to enable root to be
> on the iSCSI volume). Others have configured iSCSI in domain 0
> and then exported the partitions to other domains as block
> devices using the normal VBD mechanism.

I'd need to use the iSCSI in domain 0 approach (other people's
guests...), haven't tried it due to lack of hardware targets, didn't get
warm fuzzies from Ardistech's code -- you've had no problems with it
though?

Steve
-- 
Stephen G. Traugott  (KG6HDQ)
UNIX/Linux Infrastructure Architect, TerraLuna LLC
stevegt@TerraLuna.Org 
http://www.stevegt.com -- http://Infrastructures.Org 


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