linux-kernel - Re: Integration of SCST in the mainstream Linux kernel

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Message-ID: <47A8A60B.7080000@garzik.org>
Date:	Tue, 05 Feb 2008 13:08:11 -0500
From:	Jeff Garzik <jeff@...zik.org>
To:	Olivier Galibert <galibert@...ox.com>,
	Linus Torvalds <torvalds@...ux-foundation.org>,
	"J. Bruce Fields" <bfields@...ldses.org>,
	"Nicholas A. Bellinger" <nab@...ux-iscsi.org>,
	James Bottomley <James.Bottomley@...senPartnership.com>,
	Vladislav Bolkhovitin <vst@...b.net>,
	Bart Van Assche <bart.vanassche@...il.com>,
	Andrew Morton <akpm@...ux-foundation.org>,
	FUJITA Tomonori <fujita.tomonori@....ntt.co.jp>,
	linux-scsi@...r.kernel.org, scst-devel@...ts.sourceforge.net,
	Linux Kernel Mailing List <linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org>,
	Mike Christie <michaelc@...wisc.edu>
Subject: Re: Integration of SCST in the mainstream Linux kernel

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



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