Importing iSCSI target from NetBSD

[Scott Long]

Maxim Sobolev wrote:

> Maxim Sobolev wrote:
> 
>> Scott Long wrote:
>>
>>> F. Senault wrote:
>>>
>>>> Monday, May 29, 2006, 10:39:40 AM, you wrote:
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>> Hi,
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>> I wonder if anybody has any objections to importing iSCSI target 
>>>>> daemon
>>>>> from NetBSD (Intel) into the base.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Mh, I'm currently doing that, with the help of the author (Alistair G.
>>>> Crooks), under the form of a port.  Alistair just provided me a new
>>>> version I'm testing, and I was planning to submit the port shortly.
>>>> (It seems to work quite well).
>>>>
>>>> Now, if it's better to include it into the base, so much the better.
>>>> Alistair was kind enough to take into consideration my suggestions,
>>>> so, now, the daemon compiles and works under FreeBSD 6 (tested lightly
>>>> with and i386 and more intensively witn an amd64).
>>>>
>>>> The work in progress is here :
>>>>
>>>> http://www.lacave.net/~fred/iscsi/
>>>>
>>>
>>> If it's not going to be integrated into the existing target 
>>> infrastructure then I'd prefer it to be a port.  Ultimately it
>>> would be nice for it to be part of the base system, though.
>>
>>
>> Well, arguably we may want to support both ways. Having iSCSI target 
>> running in userland completely has some serious advantages (security 
>> is a big one for example, as you can run daemon easily as unprivileged 
>> process). The kernel iSCSI target only makes sense for really 
>> performance-constrained cases, and hopefully sooner or later we will 
>> be able to narrow the gap by utilizing zero-copy interfaces.
> 
> 
> P.S. Just to make it clear - just consider running iSCSI over 100MBps 
> link or even a slower WAN links, which I think covers very large market 
> for this technology now. Performance constrain imposed by running in 
> userland is unlikely to be an issue at all.
> 
> -Maxim

Every company and group that I've talked to about iSCSI is worried about
performance.  In any case, please follow the lead of Mr. Senault and
look at making this a port.

Scott