QNAP NAS Community Forum

Hi there

Qnap's introduction of SCSI3 Persistent Reservation is great, now making Qnap one of the
first NAS in entry-level viable for 2008 (R2) failover Clustering.

I just wanted to ask which of the Linux iSCSI implementations you are using?
From what I know SCST (since around mid 2009) and LIO-target (since end of august) seem
to support SCSI-3 PR, ietd does not, concerning SCGT don't know.- Is there anything else?

Before I'd get into production prefer to know what technology is used in Qnap boxes and therefore experiment a little before on a testbox to learn and handle iscsi. (Even though your UI is much easier but I prefer to go once deep into the dirt before using the more easier UI's

koff wrote:I just wanted to ask which of the Linux iSCSI implementations you are using?

[/sbin] # ./iscsid -v
iscsid version 2.0-871
My feeling that QNAP uses Open iSCSI (http://www.open-iscsi.org/ as a starting point.

[/sys/kernel/config/target] # cat version
Target Engine Core ConfigFS Infrastructure v2.0.0 on Linux/i686 on 2.6.30.6
[/sys/kernel/config/target/iscsi] # cat lio_version
Linux-iSCSI.org Target v3.1.0 on Linux/i686 on 2.6.30.6

That's what you were looking for I guess. More at http://linux-iscsi.org/

QNAP also uses file I/O (instead of block I/O) which is recommended for VMware for instance.

Rgds,
Didier

Hi - Thanks
From what I was able to read on open-iscsi.org this project has been merged together with to linux-iscsi.org (those who do LIO target) - his is written on their news. - Later above is linux-iscsi.org, which means they must be using the very latest 3.1 LIO target. Unfortunately LIO-target is not in mainline but I will give it a try. - It's sad there is nothing common like Opensolaris' COMSTAR under linux.

<ofTopic>
Interesting, apparently everoyne uses its own thing and there is no reall consensus:
- Qnap -> LIO target
- Open-e apparently use SCGT - saw that in their forum and they have actively contributed to get SCSI-3 PR
- Synology is stuck with IET which lacks a lot of features but is quite stable.
</ofTopic>

koff wrote:Interesting, apparently everoyne uses its own thing and there is no reall consensus

QNAP chose LIO (http://www.linux-iscsi.org/index.php/Main_Page), is it a smart choice?
That's IMHO the dark side of open source, you stick with a project but you don't know if it will become the 'standard' one or at least a project with inovation and ongoing development for bug fixes and enhancement.

For me, today LIO is definitely a smart choice. I just hope it will remain a smart choice in the next couple of years...

Rgds,
Didier