free iscsi target software for testing?
- Thread starter Lanz
- Start date
Man of Honour
openfiler?
OpenSolaris (and Solaris) will support this controller out-of-the-box. Sun OEM'd just about every variant LSI made.
You would also be able to use ZFS and get all the benefits of this amazing filesystem (end-to-end checksums, snapshots, remote replication, etc).
-Pete
We have just bought a 48TB Sun Storage system using this, but it's not going to get installed for a few weeks, and I wanted to test iscsi before then.
Not sure about Opensolaris, I've not got a clue how to use Unix/Linux so I think i'll try the Openfiler, as that looks good for noobs.
Not sure about Opensolaris, I've not got a clue how to use Unix/Linux so I think i'll try the Openfiler, as that looks good for noobs.
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If you've bought one of the Sun Open Storage systems (which if it's Open Solaris + ZFS based is quite possible 
) then just keep in mind that currently the iSCSI performance isn't as good as NFS if you're planning on using it for something like virtualisation.
We found that NFS was between 1.5-2x as fast as iSCSI. That's not to say that the iSCSI performance was bad...just the NFS performance blew it out of the water
) then just keep in mind that currently the iSCSI performance isn't as good as NFS if you're planning on using it for something like virtualisation.We found that NFS was between 1.5-2x as fast as iSCSI. That's not to say that the iSCSI performance was bad...just the NFS performance blew it out of the water
This is what we have bought
http://www.sun.com/storage/disk_systems/unified_storage/7310/
It was very cheap compared to everything else, I'm a little worried how it'll perform. We might end up just using it for CCTV video and departmental data. Not sure it'll work well for VM's.
http://www.sun.com/storage/disk_systems/unified_storage/7310/
It was very cheap compared to everything else, I'm a little worried how it'll perform. We might end up just using it for CCTV video and departmental data. Not sure it'll work well for VM's.
Yup that's the Sun Open Storage system. We've currently got a 7110 (baby 2TB unit) for a proof of concept test, and we're looking at getting a no single point of failure 7410 for our VMs and datastores.
From talking to others that are running these units, and from our own experiences I can tell you that they're more than capable of handling a number of VMs running from them
.If you are thinking of using it for VMs with Citrix or VMWare then NFS is currently the protocol of choice. If you're using Hyper-V then you've only got the option of iSCSI.
One other thought I've just had - the Sun S7000 open storage simulator (the software in a VM essentially) is able to act as a iSCSI target. It of course has the advantage of giving you the same exact interface as the 7310, while not actually having to play with the kit its self
.Have a look here for the Sun Unified Storage simulator VM. Should work in Virtualbox or VMWare Player.
Thanks for the info. We are going to use Hyper-V R2 with VMM08R2, but i'll check out the simulator on a workstation.
We have about 20 Server VMs at the moment (and counting...), but not all of them require HA, so only maybe only 10 will end up on the NAS for now.
I'm a little concerned about the 4 x Gbit links on the NAS, as we'll only end up using 2Gbit, as we need 1 for management and 1 for intersite replication. 2GB seems like a small pipe to me when you have VMs, CCTV and maybe departmental shares all coming from it.
We have about 20 Server VMs at the moment (and counting...), but not all of them require HA, so only maybe only 10 will end up on the NAS for now.
I'm a little concerned about the 4 x Gbit links on the NAS, as we'll only end up using 2Gbit, as we need 1 for management and 1 for intersite replication. 2GB seems like a small pipe to me when you have VMs, CCTV and maybe departmental shares all coming from it.
To be honest from the 20 or so VMs we're running off of our unit we've yet to see any problems with the uplinks. We did add an additional quad-port gigabit ethernet card (was about £300-400 from our sun reseller) as we wanted to try serving files direct from the box as well as using it from VMs at the same time.
If I was doing it again, and what we'd probably consider for the 7410 deployment we're looking at, is to start with the gigabit uplinks and plan to move to a 10gigabit card in the future.
If I was doing it again, and what we'd probably consider for the 7410 deployment we're looking at, is to start with the gigabit uplinks and plan to move to a 10gigabit card in the future.