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[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index] RE: iSCSI: DataRN> The iSCSI draft should refrain from advocating any retry policies at the > iSCSI layer, such as being currently done for connection failures and > digest errors. If the above had said "at the SCSI layer", I'd agree. The issue being addressed here is hiding failure of a connection in an iSCSI session from SCSI (i.e., transparently recover at the iSCSI layer from failure of an iSCSI connection). The following discussion of retry is correct for SCSI, but doesn't apply to iSCSI because iSCSI will deliver the retried command to the SCSI layer at the device at most once, and hence the described problem caused by the command being executed at the device twice can't happen. > I/O retry policies are decided by the SCSI ULP based on the class of the > target. (disk, tape, changer, etc). > For a tape class of device, the SCSI ULP may not wish to retry on an error > [without a prior rewind operation]. In such situations, iSCSI attempting to > retry on connection failures or digest errors can result in problems with > sequential access type of media. OTOH, I'm sympathetic to the argument that it's up to an iSCSI implementation to decide how aggressively to recover a failed connection - notice that SCSI works quite happily over Fibre Channel where any individual command can be dropped without losing the session, and there's no retry (although FCP-2 has had to do some things for tape). The mechanisms needed for transparent recovery should be documented, and then we can figure out if they are MUST, SHOULD, or MAY implement. Getting back to the original point - the reason for dropping DataRN is that the gain from the optimization it provides for this sort of recovery situation doesn't seem to justify the added complexity. --David --------------------------------------------------- David L. Black, Senior Technologist EMC Corporation, 42 South St., Hopkinton, MA 01748 +1 (508) 435-1000 x75140 FAX: +1 (508) 497-8500 black_david@emc.com Mobile: +1 (978) 394-7754 ---------------------------------------------------
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