ZFS expose as LUN over fibrechannel??

[growse]

Had a storage question for the experts.

I wanted to play around with FC for remote storage and somehow couple it to my grand plans of having a self-build ZFS storage box. Originally I was going to expose a fixed-size zfs filesystem over iSCSI and connect a single host to it over the network, but I was thinking I might go down the FC route instead. I can probably get some not-that-new FC HBAs from work, so hardware isn't a problem.

My approach would just be to stick an HBA in the storage box, another in my client and run a single fibre stretch between them. The question is, will there be a simple way on Solaris to take a zfs and expose it as a LUN over that FC connection? Googling around reveals a lot about how to get remote LUNs to play as part of a zfs filesystem, but nothing about how to expose a zfs filesystem over a FC connection.

Am I barking up completely the wrong tree here? I've not much experience of FC yet

 

[TrX]

I have this exact setup running about 4Metres away from me, Running point to point FC to expose 2x 100G FC Luns to an ESXi Vmware Box.

Both have Qlogic FC HBA's.

It's actually very easy todo, i'll try and dig out my notes on it, or If I can't find them when your a little closer to the setup just let me know and I'll try and point you in the right direction with commands etc

//TrX

 

[growse]

Just seeing what HBAs to get, will I be OK with 2GBit, or should I see if I can go a bit quicker and get 4? Hunting on ebay, the QLA2340 seem fairly reasonable.

*edit* if I get a dual-port 2340, can I effectively do 4Gbit, or doesn't it work that way?

 

[rick827]

So you want to create a LUN on ZFS formatted storage? Any reason why as there's probably a better route? As you know usual practice is to create a fixed size volume with zfs and let the remote system format it as it sees fit. If you want ZFS then the best thing to do is let the remote system format it with ZFS.
Technically you can sit the LUN on ZFS but its probably not what you were expecting, you'd need to create a zero'd out file on a zfs system and use that as the back end for the LUN

Good link here http://dlc.sun.com/osol/docs/content/2008.11/COMSTARADMIN/ggqsw.html

 

[growse]

So you want to create a LUN on ZFS formatted storage? Any reason why as there's probably a better route? As you know usual practice is to create a fixed size volume with zfs and let the remote system format it as it sees fit. If you want ZFS then the best thing to do is let the remote system format it with ZFS.
Technically you can sit the LUN on ZFS but its probably not what you were expecting, you'd need to create a zero'd out file on a zfs system and use that as the back end for the LUN

Good link here http://dlc.sun.com/osol/docs/content/2008.11/COMSTARADMIN/ggqsw.html

I'm aware of the ability to share a fixed size ZFS volume over something like iSCSI, which the client computer would then format and put its own filesystem on. I just want to do the same thing, but over FC instead of iSCSI. I'm using ZFS because I've also got NFS / CIFS filesystems and want to take advantage of the snapshotting.

COMSTAR looks to be something like what I need.

 

[rick827]

Yep COMSTAR is what you need, it supports software/HBA FC/iscsi etc etc and will let you create a LUN from volume you've made then present it via your HBA.. its very similar to what you'd do with iscsi

 

[growse]

Excellent. I bought a couple of Qlogic QLA2340s from the bay, 2GBit is probably good enough for my needs for the moment.