From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Jeff Garzik Subject: Re: Integration of SCST in the mainstream Linux kernel Date: Tue, 05 Feb 2008 13:08:11 -0500 Message-ID: <47A8A60B.7080000@garzik.org> References: <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> <20080204210121.GF18682@fieldses.org> <47A7986B.1070206@garzik.org> <20080205130517.GA35763@dspnet.fr.eu.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]:52669 "EHLO mail.dvmed.net" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1758638AbYBESIb (ORCPT ); Tue, 5 Feb 2008 13:08:31 -0500 In-Reply-To: <20080205130517.GA35763@dspnet.fr.eu.org> Sender: linux-scsi-owner@vger.kernel.org List-Id: linux-scsi@vger.kernel.org To: Olivier Galibert , Linus Torvalds , "J. Bruce Fields" , "Nicholas A. Bellinger" , James Olivier Galibert wrote: > On Mon, Feb 04, 2008 at 05:57:47PM -0500, Jeff Garzik wrote: >> iSCSI and NBD were passe ideas at birth. :) >> >> Networked block devices are attractive because the concepts and >> implementation are more simple than networked filesystems... but usually >> you want to run some sort of filesystem on top. At that point you might >> as well run NFS or [gfs|ocfs|flavor-of-the-week], and ditch your >> networked block device (and associated complexity). > > Call me a sysadmin, but I find easier to plug in and keep in place an > ethernet cable than these parallel scsi cables from hell. Every > server has at least two ethernet ports by default, with rarely any > surprises at the kernel level. Adding ethernet cards is inexpensive, > and you pretty much never hear of compatibility problems between > cards. > > So ethernet as a connection medium is really nice compared to scsi. > Too bad iscsi is demented and ATAoE/NBD inexistant. Maybe external > SAS will be nice, but I don't see it getting to the level of > universality of ethernet any time soon. And it won't get the same > amount of user-level compatibility testing in any case. Indeed, at the end of the day iSCSI is a bloated cabling standard. :) It has its uses, but I don't see it as ever coming close to replacing direct-to-network (perhaps backed with local cachefs) filesystems... which is how all the hype comes across to me. Cheap "Lintel" boxes everybody is familiar with _are_ the storage appliances. Until mass-produced ATA and SCSI devices start shipping with ethernet connectors, anyway. Jeff