Re: [Xen-users] Linux Fiber or iSCSI SAN

[Errol Neal <eneal@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

> > I've built a number of white box SANs  using everything from OpenSolaris
> > and COMSTAR, Open-E, OpenFiler, SCST, IET... etc.using iSCSI and FC.
> > I've settled Ubuntu boxes booted via DRBD running SCST OR ESOS.
> > From a performance perspective, I have pretty large customer that two XCP
> > pools running off a Dell MD3200F using 4GB FC. To compare, I took a Dell
> > 2970 or something like that, stuck 8 Seatgate 2.5" Constellation Drives in
> > it, a 4GB HBA and installed ESOS on it.
> > I never got around to finishing my testing, but the ESOS box can
> > definitely keep up and things like LSI cachecade would really help to bring
> > it to a more enterprise-level performance with respect to random reads and
> > writes.
> > Lastly, there is such an abundance of DIRT CHEAP,  lightly used 4GB FC
> > equipment on the market today that I find it interesting that people still
> > prefer iSCSI. iSCSI is good if you have 10GBE which is still far to
> > expensive per port IMO. However, you can get 2 - 4 port, 4GB FC Hbas on
> > ebay for under 100 bucks and I generally am able to purchase fully loaded
> > switches (brocade 200e) for somewhere in the neighborhood of 300 bucks each!
> > MPIO with 2 FC ports from an initiator to a decent target can easily
> > saturate the link on basic sequential r/w write tests. Not to mention,
> > improved latency, access times, etc for random i/o.
> >
> 
> Hello Eneal,
> 
> Thank you so much for your response. Did you experience any problems with
> ESOS and your FS SAN in terms of stability.
> We already have our myrinet FC cards and switches, and I agree, it was dirt
> cheap.
> 

ESOS by all means is not perfect. I'm running an older release because it's 
impossible to upgrade a production system without downtime using ESOS 
(currently) but I was impressed with it non the less and i can see where it's 
going.
I think what has worked better for me is using SCST on Ubuntu. As long as your 
hardware is stable, you should have no issues.
At another site, I have two boxes in production (running iSCSI at this site) 
and I've had zero non-hardware-related issues and I've been running them in 
prod for 1 - 2 years. 


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