Gustav Brock
Gustav at cactus.dk
Fri Apr 23 10:39:50 CDT 2010
Hi Jim et al The install of this is really easy if you know something about networking, though the configuration of CIFS/SMB is a bit strange - the user forum has to be consulted to find out how to configure the Windows workgroup: https://forums.openfiler.com/viewtopic.php?id=2092 Everything is managed remotely via a neat web interface. The iSCSI initiator (client) is native of Vista+ and is a free Microsoft download for Windows XP. To run a test, I installed Openfiler on an old 1.6 GHz box with 512 MB ram, onboard 100 Gb NIC, and a ATA interface. Nothing fancy. Then a shared SMB (Samba) drive and an iSCSI volume was created - the latter was attached and formatted with NTFS. I have an Access database routine which takes about 80 s to run off a shared drive of our main server and 20 s off a local drive. Database size is about 100 MB. When I ran this from the Openfiler box, the time was about 75 s off the attached SMB drive and 20 s off the attached iSCSI volume. If you watch the network traffic, it runs nearly continuously when a shared drive is used but, off the local or iSCSI volume, only with an initial burst and some small blurbs now and then. I guess the picture is that when using a shared drive, data are read and written in portions, while for the fixed volumes the complete file is read and cached, thus the workstation processor speed is the only bottleneck. Notice that this was without any setup of Jumbo Frames, trunked switch ports, RAID system, or top-rated machine power, not even a Gigabit network. /gustav >>> accessd at shaw.ca 29-03-2010 01:01 >>> Even though I have not heard anything about iSCSI target, it does sound like a very descent product at a decent price. I have been slowly replacing my home office network with GByte LAN cards, switches and router. The internal performance is really stellar but Internet is only marginally improved but that is probably because my ISP throttles back performance... On a Linux box the performance should be better as there is less overhead than on Windows products. Keep me posted on what you learn and any performance and setup issues. Jim -----Original Message----- From: dba-tech-bounces at databaseadvisors.com [mailto:dba-tech-bounces at databaseadvisors.com] On Behalf Of Gustav Brock Sent: Sunday, March 28, 2010 2:21 PM To: dba-tech at databaseadvisors.com Subject: [dba-Tech] iSCSI Openfiler SAN Hi all Are any of you using iSCSI to attach network storage? I happened to locate this free server (iSCSI Target) which offers both SMB/CIFS (Windows share), iSCSI Target server, NFS, FTP, UPS, HTTP/WebDAV, LDAP, and rsync services, all controlled from a nice web interface: http://www.openfiler.com/ It seems to be well beyond the "normal" NAS appliances but is free to download and use from a single ISO install file or as ready-made machines for VMware - both in 32- and 64-bit. It runs on a rPath locked down Linux. Documentation is sparse (manual is €40 to buy) but I found this beginner's guide: http://www.petri.co.il/iscsi-san-vmware-esx.htm http://www.petri.co.il/use-openfiler-as-free-vmware-esx-san-server.htm http://www.petri.co.il/connect-vmware-esx-server-iscsi-san-openfiler.htm and this guide, How to connect your Windows 2008 Server & Vista PC to your iSCSI SAN: http://www.windowsnetworking.com/articles_tutorials/Connect-Windows-Server-2008-Windows-Vista-iSCSI-Server.html All very nice, but big question is of course performance? It could be fine to set up a box with an array of 2 TB drives and off we go. But? Would I need 10 Gbit NICs and switches? These are still quite expensive.