Re: Are there any coming iSCSI HBAs? Preferably at 100Mb speed?

[Mark Bakke <mbakke@cisco.com>]

"Steven J. Schuchart Jr." wrote:
> 
> 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.

Many of the Windows/Linux applications do just fine over 100Mb.  For
the apps that really do need close to 1Gb, you would want the iSCSI HBA
for other reasons that diskless booting, so the cost may already need
to be spent.

> 
> 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.

We (Cisco) have an iSCSI network boot capability that is software-
only, using PXE.  It has been shipping since October 2002, and follows
the iSCSI boot specification.  Other than potential security concerns
(for those who wish to do this over a more public network), it works
just fine, and provides a very good (and extremely cheap; it even works
well over 100Mbps for most applications) diskless solution.  It does,
however, currently require a Cisco iSCSI target for support purposes,
which would probably rule out a home solution.


> 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?

-- 
Mark A. Bakke
Cisco Systems
mbakke@cisco.com
763.398.1054