SCSI network

[Robert Jesacher]

On 31.03.2008, at 21:53, Walt Pawley wrote:
> On 3/29/08 1:17 PM +0100, Wojciech Puchar wrote on SCSI network
>
>> they are all adaptec (ahc driver) controllers - manual says it can be
>> target as well as initiator
>
> Others have been discussing the potential speed of such an
> arrangement. I'm more concerned about SCSI bus addressing being
> a problem. Perhaps the statement above means that each card can
> have a distinct ID on the bus. My experience with SCSI is
> pretty much limited to systems where the host computer is
> hardwired as device 0. If these cards are like that, they'll
> likely be pretty confused about who's who.

Usually you should be able to change the Host-ID (which is 7 per  
default), but
the real issue with SCSI is, that there is always an "initiator" which  
connects to
a "target", although this can change (as you state) its not as easy as  
opening an
other network port.

Think of it as usb, you cannot hook 2 PC's together without some  
special device
in between (ok SCSI is a bit more flexible tough). The only things  
that popped up
on google were pretty much outdated (around 1998), so this will not  
really help
you. It looks like the guys played with this to overcome the fast- 
ethernet limit.

If you really need something fast, grab some used FC switches  
(Brocade) with
GBIC's equipped and some cheap HBA's (e.g. emulex or qlogic). In this  
scenario
you can run FC-IP which works well. There you can choose between  
1/2/4G per
sec depending on the money you want to spend (4G is way off limits!)

Personally I think this is a little overkill, although nice to play  
with. :-) If you need
a cheap solution why don't you equip you PC's with FireWire cards? But  
ask
somebody about the limitations there (IMHO you can make some sort of bus
connection, but  worst case it would be one-to-one connections).

br,
Robert