Re: Multi-Actuator SAS HDD First Look

[Hannes Reinecke <hare@suse.de>]

On Thu, 5 Apr 2018 17:43:46 -0600
Tim Walker <tim.t.walker@seagate.com> wrote:

> On Tue, Apr 3, 2018 at 1:46 AM, Christoph Hellwig <hch@infradead.org>
> wrote:
> > On Sat, Mar 31, 2018 at 01:03:46PM +0200, Hannes Reinecke wrote:  
> >> Actually I would propose to have a 'management' LUN at LUN0, who
> >> could handle all the device-wide commands (eg things like START
> >> STOP UNIT, firmware update, or even SMART commands), and ignoring
> >> them for the remaining LUNs.  
> >
> > That is in fact the only workable option at all.  Everything else
> > completly breaks the scsi architecture.  
> 
> Here's an update: Seagate will eliminate the inter-LU actions from
> FORMAT UNIT and SANITIZE. Probably SANITIZE will be per-LUN, but
> FORMAT UNIT is trickier due to internal drive architecture, and how
> FORMAT UNIT initializes on-disk metadata. Likely it will require some
> sort of synchronization across LUNs, such as the command being sent to
> both LUNs sequentially or something similar. We are also considering
> not supporting FORMAT UNIT at all - would anybody object? Any other
> suggestions?
> 

Ah. Far better.
What about delegating FORMAT UNIT to the control LUN, and not
implementing it for the individual disk LUNs?
That would make an even stronger case for having a control LUN;
with that there wouldn't be any problem with having to synchronize
across LUNs etc.

Cheers,

Hannes