Re: iSCSI: Canonical Targets

[Stephen Bailey <steph@cs.uchicago.edu>]

Mark,

I don't disagree with the general thrust of your statement, but I must
argue with:

> Even in an environment without proxies and gateways, any
> medium-sized disk array should be able to support more than one
> logical target.

Unless somebody's really building a medium sized disk array a)
completely from scratch b) for iSCSI use only, this is unlikely.

Existing disk arrays present all storage containers as LUNs.  The most
likely [credible] iSCSI targets will be existing storage arrays with
iSCSI front-ends.  This follows the ||SCSI->FCP pattern.  The
alternative interpretation, which I'm pretty sure is false, is that
the back-end part of a storage controller is really simple so the
serious iSCSI targets will not come from the same vendors (or groups)
as existing, serious storage targets.

Bridges are a different issue, but I've always felt (and you seem to
agree) that the bridges just have to suck it up and, well, bridge, the
semantic gaps between what's expected in a native initiator->target
interaction and what you get with an initiator->bridge->target one.

Steph