Any plans for iSCSI initiator ? Fibre Channel initiator ?

[nepenou]

Hello,
Is there plans for iSCSI initiator ? Fibre Channel initiator ?
I don't see it on the roadmap.

TIA,
-- Leon

[pjacobi]

There are no current plans for iSCSI initiator support on VMS.

I seem to remember that on IA64 or Alpha, there was an iSCSI initiator "demo" kit for VMS. it was a bare bones implementation and still needed a lot of work. The project was never finished, and the project was discontinued.

I suppose it is always possible to port the old code to X86, but this is unlikely to happen unless there is a large customer demand.


Paul A. Jacobi
VMS Software, Inc.

Added in 24 minutes 47 seconds:
Note that it would be possible to use iSCSI in Hypervisor host OS (ESXi, Linux, or Windows) to access iSCSI volume. A new virtual disk could be created on an iSCSI volume and added to a VMS VM. VMS would see the disk as a SATA or SCSI disk and the Hypervisor would take care of the iSCSI transport.

Paul A. Jacobi
VMS Software, Inc.

[nepenou]

Well, what about the FC initiator ?

[pjacobi]

It is currently possible to connect ESXi system to Fibre Channel SAN and create ESXi storage volumes on the SAN. Virtual disk can be created on the ESXi SAN volumes and attached to VMS VM. VMS VM would see the disk as virtual SATA or SCSI disk (DKcu:) and ESXi would transport the data to/from the SAN volume.

ESXi Fibre Channel Pass-through allows dedicating a QLogic Fibre Channel card to a particular VM. At VM power-on, ESXi sets the card for the VM memory space, then VMS directly controls all operations of the Fibre Channel card. This will provide native access to VMS volumes on the SAN as DGcu: devices, just like bare metal. ESXi is only involved in the initial power-up and configuration, while the VMS device driver handles the data transport.

We currently have several systems in our lab configured with Fibre Channel Pass-though. These systems need to be tested and qualified in a cluster with Fibre Channel storage. I don't have a timeframe for when this will be completed, but it is a high priority. Only select QLogic Fibre Channel adapters will be supported and not Emulex.

Linux KVM also has a similar pass-through capability which we also need to test.


Paul A. Jacobi
VMS Software, Inc.

[nepenou]

I have OpenVMS VMs on ESXi hosts equipped with QLogic HBA and will be happy to run early adopter testing.

[madx86]

just checking in , is there any updated timeline on when iSCSI support will be added ? if so what will the solution look like ? will it be a software iscsi initiator over virtual LAN cards ? or will it be a software initiator using dedicated iSCSI HBA via direct passthrough ?

[nepenou]

We currently have several systems in our lab configured with Fibre Channel Pass-though. These systems need to be tested and qualified in a cluster with Fibre Channel storage. I don't have a timeframe for when this will be completed, but it is a high priority. Only select QLogic Fibre Channel adapters will be supported and not Emulex.

Is there an experimental build that I can test against Fibre Channel storage ?

[roberbrooks]

> Is there an experimental build that I can test against Fibre Channel storage?

No VMS changes have been made to make it work, other than entries into SYS$CONFIG.DAT
for various Qlogic adapters. We've tested with the QL26xx and QL29xx adapters.

If our testing goes well, we hope to support fibre channel passthrough in V9.2-3, but my statement here is not
a commitment that will happen.

In other news, we are looking at iSCSI once again, but that is definitely a futures project and will not be included
in V9.2-3, which we expect will ship late this calendar year.