fiber-channel HBA as bootdevice for rel 5/6 (OP was on fb-q)

[Eric Anderson]

mdff wrote:
> hi,
> i'm posting this to the isp list to hope there's
> more than 0 replies on that here ;-)
> 
> we would like to run the following configuration:
> some i386-servers, each connecting to a SAN with a
> PCI or PCI-X FC-HBA with boot-ROM showing up as a
> SCSI-device for freebsd to use as the root-disk.
> does anyone know working HBAs (2Gbit speed) with
> rel 5 or 6. best would be support with the default
> kernel!
> anyone some suggestions/experiences with that?
> br...
> 
> PS: please, just reply to the list, i'm on it!

I use the QLogic cards (isp0: <Qlogic ISP 2312 PCI FC-AL Adapter>) Which 
I think is sold as a 2340 or some such number.

These cards work very well under 5.X, but I'm having some issues with 
them under 6.x which I'm working on resolving.  I'm mostly using them in 
the case where I have a local boot device (local LSILogic RAID 
controller), and then I have partitions on disk arrays connected both 
directly via fiber and also through a SAN fabric.  I did try the root 
install on fiber approach, and if I recall correctly it was so 
uneventful I moved right past it and on to other more fun things. :)

The 5.x series has support out-of-the box, the only thing you might have 
to do is load the firmware on boot, which is easy enough (add 
ispfw_load="YES" to your /boot/loader.conf, or type 'load ispfw' at the 
loader prompt when booting).

As far as performance goes, I've successfully put 180MB/s through fiber 
channel to disk using FreeBSD 5.4-RELEASE.

Hope that helps.

Eric



-- 
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Eric Anderson        Sr. Systems Administrator        Centaur Technology
Anything that works is better than anything that doesn't.
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