From mboxrd@z Thu Jan  1 00:00:00 1970
From: Vladislav Bolkhovitin <vst@vlnb.net>
Subject: Re: [RFC PATCH 0/19] Target_Core_Mod/ConfigFS v3.0 for v2.6.30
Date: Mon, 06 Apr 2009 16:09:20 +0400
Message-ID: <49D9F0F0.9080206@vlnb.net>
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Cc: LKML <linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org>,
	linux-scsi <linux-scsi@vger.kernel.org>,
	Linux-fsdevel <linux-fsdevel@vger.kernel.org>,
	James Bottomley <James.Bottomley@HansenPartnership.com>,
	Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>,
	Hannes Reinecke <hare@suse.de>,
	FUJITA Tomonori <fujita.tomonori@lab.ntt.co.jp>,
	Mike Christie <michaelc@cs.wisc.edu>,
	Joel Becker <joel.becker@oracle.com>,
	"Martin K. Petersen" <martin.petersen@oracle.com>,
	Ming Zhang <blackmagic02881@gmail.com>,
	Philipp Reisner <philipp.reisner@linbit.com>,
	Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>,
	Jens Axboe <jens.axboe@oracle.com>,
	Rafiu Fakunle <rafiu@openfiler.com>,
	Douglas Gilbert <dgilbert@interlog.com>
To: "Nicholas A. Bellinger" <nab@linux-iscsi.org>
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Nicholas A. Bellinger, on 04/05/2009 08:01 AM wrote:
> Greetings all,
> 
> I am very proud to announce the first RFC and submission for review of
> Target_Core_Mod/ConfigFS v3.0 for v2.6.30.
> 
> Target_Core_Mod is a generic target engine and ConfigFS enabled
> infrastructure that provides access to the export server side resources
> from Linux/SCSI, Linux/BLOCK and Linux/FILEIO (using buffered I/O)
> subsytems to target mode storage fabric modules (like the LIO-Target
> v3.0 fabric module).  It does complete SPC-3 control emulation on top of
> Linux/BLOCK and Linux/FILEIO objects, and does a SCSI passthrough (with
> intelligent max_sectors handling) for Linux/SCSI objects.
> 
> Target_Core_Mod/ConfigFS is the next generation version of the
> LIO-Target v2.9 codebase that is completely SCSI fabric module
> independent.  The configuration plane has been ported from our legacy
> LIO IOCTl control path in v2.9, and is now 100% upstream ConfigFS
> infrastructure clean for v3.0.
> 
> Target_Core_Mod/ConfigFS also contains a number of SCSI fabric features
> that you will not find in any other open source Linux-SCSI or
> Linux-iSCSI target implementation.  These now include SPC-3 compliant
> persistent reservation support that is passing complete domain
> validation from multiple client environments (RHEL SCSI fencing and MSFT
> Cluster 2008), Asymmetric Logical Unit Assignment (Linux scsi_dh_alua
> and MPxIO on OpenSolaris clients), VPD/WWN information emulation and
> SCSI MIBs to name the most interesting ones.

Nicholas,

What is the ultimate goal of Target_Core_Mod/ConfigFS? Is it to replace 
currently kernel's target subsystem STGT? If yes, what advantages 
Target_Core_Mod/ConfigFS has over STGT, which can justify such a move?

For convenience of all interested people I summarized comparison between 
STGT and other existing SCSI targets for Linux, including 
Target_Core_Mod/ConfigFS (LIO v3.0), in 
http://scst.sourceforge.net/comparison.html. If you don't like anything 
in this comparison, we can discuss it.

Vlad