From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: "Christopher R. Hertel" Subject: Re: [LSF/MM TOPIC][ATTEND] linux servers as a storage server - what's missing? Date: Wed, 25 Jan 2012 14:25:39 -0600 Message-ID: <4F206543.60309@samba.org> References: <4EF2026F.2090506@redhat.com> <20120103142609.2b4d06cb@tlielax.poochiereds.net> <20120124213609.GA12426@fieldses.org> <4F1F3B00.8060603@redhat.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Cc: "J. Bruce Fields" , Jeff Layton , linux-fsdevel@vger.kernel.org, "linux-scsi@vger.kernel.org" , Jeremy Allison , Simo Sorce To: Ric Wheeler Return-path: In-Reply-To: <4F1F3B00.8060603@redhat.com> Sender: linux-scsi-owner@vger.kernel.org List-Id: linux-fsdevel.vger.kernel.org I have actually been mulling this over a good deal in my mind, but I keep approaching it from different perspectives. Here are some random questions that pop up in my mind... Can we put FibreChannel HBAs in *target* mode into a Linux-based PC and export LUNs via FibreChannel? - Do we support multipath in this configuration? - Zoning? Muli-access LUNs for Clustering? Where are we on FCoE support? Where to we stand on ATAoE? - Coraid, the creaters of ATAoE, were recently listed 3rd on a "Most Promising Storage Start-Ups in 2012" list[1]. - ATAoE support has been standard in Linux for years. - The target software is very low-level. It needs an overhaul and a powerful configuration API. What about other block-level protocols? My familiarity with these varies. Chris -)----- [1]http://www.storagenewsletter.com/news/startups/most-promising-storage-start-ups Ric Wheeler wrote: > On 01/24/2012 04:36 PM, J. Bruce Fields wrote: >> On Tue, Jan 03, 2012 at 02:26:09PM -0500, Jeff Layton wrote: >>> On Wed, 21 Dec 2011 10:59:43 -0500 >>> Ric Wheeler wrote: >>> >>>> One common thing that I see a lot of these days is an increasing >>>> number of >>>> platforms that are built on our stack as storage servers. Ranging >>>> from the >>>> common linux based storage/NAS devices up to various distributed >>>> systems. >>>> Almost all of them use our common stack - software RAID, LVM, >>>> XFS/ext4 and samba. >>>> >>>> At last year's SNIA developers conference, it was clear that >>>> Microsoft is >>>> putting a lot of effort into enhancing windows 8 server as a storage >>>> server with >>>> both support for a pNFS server and of course SMB. I think that linux >>>> (+samba) is >>>> ahead of the windows based storage appliances today, but they are >>>> putting >>>> together a very aggressive list of features. >>>> >>>> I think that it would be useful and interesting to take a slot at >>>> this year's >>>> LSF to see how we are doing in this space. How large do we need to >>>> scale for an >>>> appliance? What kind of work is needed (support for the copy >>>> offload system >>>> call? better support for out of band notifications like those used >>>> in "thinly >>>> provisioned" SCSI devices? management API's? Ease of use CLI work? >>>> SMB2.2 support?). >>>> >>>> The goal would be to see what technical gaps we have that need more >>>> active >>>> development in, not just a wish list :) >>>> >>>> Ric >>> Unfortunately, w/o a wishlist of sorts, it's hard to know what needs >>> more active development ;). >>> >>> While HCH will probably disagree, being able to support more >>> NFSv4/Windows API features at the VFS layer would make it a lot easier >>> to do a more unified serving appliance. Right now, both knfsd and samba >>> track too much info internally, and that makes it very difficult to >>> serve the same data via multiple protocols. >> By the way, we could really use a >> Windows/Samba expert if we're going to discuss that. >> >> I don't think their list(s) got the announcement? >> >> --b. > > Adding in three windows/samba people that I know of :) > > Ric > >>> Off the top of my head, my "wishlist" for better NFSv4 serving would be: >>> >>> - RichACLs >>> - Share/Deny mode support on open >>> - mandatory locking that doesn't rely on weirdo file modes >>> >>> It's always going to be hard for us to compete with dedicated >>> appliances. Where Linux can shine though is in allowing for more >>> innovative combinations. >>> >>> Being able to do active/active NFS serving from clustered filesystems, >>> for instance is something that we can eventually attain but that would >>> be harder to do in an appliance. This sort of discussion might also >>> dovetail with Benny's proposal about pNFS serving. >>> >>> -- >>> Jeff Layton >>> -- >>> To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe >>> linux-fsdevel" in >>> the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org >>> More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html > -- "Implementing CIFS - the Common Internet FileSystem" ISBN: 013047116X Samba Team -- http://www.samba.org/ -)----- Christopher R. Hertel jCIFS Team -- http://jcifs.samba.org/ -)----- ubiqx development, uninq. ubiqx Team -- http://www.ubiqx.org/ -)----- crh@ubiqx.mn.org OnLineBook -- http://ubiqx.org/cifs/ -)----- crh@ubiqx.org