From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Jeff Garzik Subject: Re: Integration of SCST in the mainstream Linux kernel Date: Mon, 04 Feb 2008 19:42:34 -0500 Message-ID: <47A7B0FA.1090403@garzik.org> References: <1201639331.3069.58.camel@localhost.localdomain> <47A05CBD.5050803@vlnb.net> <47A7049A.9000105@vlnb.net> <1202139015.3096.5.camel@localhost.localdomain> <47A73C86.3060604@vlnb.net> <1202144767.3096.38.camel@localhost.localdomain> <47A7488B.4080000@vlnb.net> <1202145901.3096.49.camel@localhost.localdomain> <1202151989.11265.576.camel@haakon2.linux-iscsi.org> <20080204224314.113afe7b@core> <1202170060.17934.142.camel@cinder.waste.org> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Return-path: Received: from srv5.dvmed.net ([207.36.208.214]:46080 "EHLO mail.dvmed.net" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1757961AbYBEAm4 (ORCPT ); Mon, 4 Feb 2008 19:42:56 -0500 In-Reply-To: Sender: linux-scsi-owner@vger.kernel.org List-Id: linux-scsi@vger.kernel.org To: Linus Torvalds Cc: Matt Mackall , Alan Cox , "Nicholas A. Bellinger" , James Bottomley , Vladislav Bolkhovitin , Bart Van Assche , Andrew Morton , FUJITA Tomonori , linux-scsi@vger.kernel.org, scst-devel@lists.sourceforge.net, Linux Kernel Mailing List , Mike Christie Linus Torvalds wrote: > On Mon, 4 Feb 2008, Matt Mackall wrote: >> But ATAoE is boring because it's not IP. Which means no routing, >> firewalls, tunnels, congestion control, etc. > > The thing is, that's often an advantage. Not just for performance. > >> NBD and iSCSI (for all its hideous growths) can take advantage of these >> things. > > .. and all this could equally well be done by a simple bridging protocol > (completely independently of any AoE code). > > The thing is, iSCSI does things at the wrong level. It *forces* people to > use the complex protocols, when it's a known that a lot of people don't > want it. > > Which is why these AoE and FCoE things keep popping up. > > It's easy to bridge ethernet and add a new layer on top of AoE if you need > it. In comparison, it's *impossible* to remove an unnecessary layer from > iSCSI. > > This is why "simple and low-level is good". It's always possible to build > on top of low-level protocols, while it's generally never possible to > simplify overly complex ones. Never discount "easy" and "just works", which is what IP (and TCP) gives you... Sure you can use a bridging protocol and all that jazz, but I wager, to a network admin yet-another-IP-application is easier to evaluate, deploy and manage on existing networks. Jeff