Subject: RE: Are there any coming iSCSI HBAs?  Preferably at 100Mb speed?
To: <ips@ece.cmu.edu>
Message-ID: <OF8B46F466.CF6D39AC-ON87256D05.0076E257@us.ibm.com>
From: Russell Lewis <russelll@us.ibm.com>
Date: Fri, 11 Apr 2003 14:50:14 -0700
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII
Sender: owner-ips@ece.cmu.edu
Precedence: bulk





An HBA of the sort I'm envisioning wouldn't need iSCSI Boot compliance.  I
was thinking more along the lines of a card where you preconfigure the IP
address and iSCSI parameters and burn it onto flash memory.

I know that $50-$100 is the commodity price range...that's exactly what I'm
looking for.  I know that it's too early to really expect that, but
somebody like NetGear could make a lot of money...

I just wonder if somebody could take fairly standard 10/100 Ethernet
hardware, slap on a little embedded processor, some memory, and some
EEPROM, and then run an open source initiator.  For development simplicity,
maybe just run embedded Linux on the little processor.





|---------+---------------------------->
|         |           "Steven J.       |
|         |           Schuchart Jr."   |
|         |           <sschuchart@nwc.c|
|         |           om>              |
|         |           Sent by:         |
|         |           owner-ips@ece.cmu|
|         |           .edu             |
|         |                            |
|         |                            |
|         |           04/11/2003 12:30 |
|         |           PM               |
|         |                            |
|---------+---------------------------->
  >------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------|
  |                                                                                                                              |
  |       To:       <ips@ece.cmu.edu>                                                                                            |
  |       cc:                                                                                                                    |
  |       Subject:  RE: Are there any coming iSCSI HBAs?  Preferably at 100Mb speed?                                             |
  |                                                                                                                              |
  >------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------|




Hmmm....I am reviewing iSCSI HBAs that look like SCSI adapters to the
system
right now.  They are 10/100/1000, and cost in excess of $500.00.  I
seriously doubt there will be a card like you describe for economic
reasons.

The $50-$100 price range is a commodity price range.  The development costs
are going to be prohibitive for an iSCSI HBA at that low speed, especially
when you can simply add a second NIC on a different subnet for iSCSI
traffic
for about that price.  That's not even addressing the issue of a 100Mb
card.
Most people will not put up with 10MB/sec max disk transfer rates.

Beyond that, I do not believe that the iSCSI boot specification is
completed
as of yet.  As far as I know you cannot boot from an iSCSI device at this
time.  If that's not right, someone please correct me.

Honestly, you would be better off using a PXE network boot.

Steven

Steven J. Schuchart Jr.
Associate Technology Editor
Servers and Storage Technology
Network Computing Magazine
Email:  sschuchart@nwc.com
"Information is the currency of democracy." - Thomas Jefferson



-----Original Message-----
From: owner-ips@ece.cmu.edu [mailto:owner-ips@ece.cmu.edu]On Behalf Of
Russell Lewis
Sent: Friday, April 11, 2003 11:25 AM
To: ips@ece.cmu.edu
Subject: Are there any coming iSCSI HBAs? Preferably at 100Mb speed?






Does anybody know of any current or coming iSCSI HBAs which show up (to the
BIOS) as ordinary SCSI adapters?  I'd like to drop such an HBA into a
legacy computer and run a totally diskless workstation at home.

However, since it will be a home computer, I'm willing to operate at 100Mb
speed - I'm willing to eat the performance hit.  It seems to me that
somebody could make an iSCSI HBA with a 100Mb interface and make it
affordable for the home user (say, $50-$100).  Anybody know of such plans?