RE: iSCSI Autosense

[Paul.A.Suhler@seagate.com]

I would look at the need a bit differently.

How many native iSCSI devices will actually be built without autosense?
I'd expect that any devices incapable of autosense will be legacy parallel
SCSI target which can be hidden behind a bridge, as happened with Fibre
Channel.  That can handle the functionality.

Doug, you know your market better than I do.  Are there people who want to
slap on an Ethernet/iSCSI front end without revising their task manager?

Cheers,

Paul Suhler

Seagate Removable Storage Solutions





"Douglas Otis" <dotis@sanlight.net>@ece.cmu.edu on 08/30/2000 15:30:50

Sent by:  owner-ips@ece.cmu.edu


To:   <ENDL_TX@computer.org>
cc:   <ips@ece.cmu.edu>

Subject:  RE: iSCSI Autosense


Ralph,

Perhaps I should say Mr. SCSI as I would not wish to slander obvious
knowledge even if I may disagree. I agree ACA provides desired interlocks
and Autosense is also highly desired. I was not concerned about disk drives
as these products are easily found supporting these standards and represent
no change to existing software.  Although your emulation description
approximates ACA with CA devices, it is not as simple as not doing it at
all
in cases where it is not needed.  For the odd device that does run one
command per nexus and where such use is not a horrific bottleneck and the
removal of Autosense leaves the operation of the device unchanged, why not
refuse Autosense?  Loaders, tape and every other odd widget you can imagine
may fall into that CA category.  Mucking with ACA emulation seems wrong in
these cases where this fig leaf is enough.  By creating an Autosense
refusal, at least those such as yourself wishing to have a pure environment
can enforce such desires.

Doug