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

[Andre Hedrick <andre@linux-ide.org>]

Russell,

Show a market for this and one can easily take blades and convert them to
support your needs.  Obviously this is not in the $100 range but
completely doable.  On an x86 system running any of the BSDs, Linux, etc
one can use a simple IDE flash chip to carry the boot-loader.  If the
boot-loader is capable of doing the same operations of iBOOT, then you
have the ablity to launch and boot.  The question is how to migrate
something like MicroSoft to the active ports.  ERL==2 with connection
migration is my first strike and looks plausable.

Comments?

Andre Hedrick
LAD Storage Consulting Group


On Mon, 14 Apr 2003, Russell Lewis wrote:

> 
> 
> 
> 
> Of course.  What (nearly) everybody seems to be missing is that I'm looking
> to turn legacy computers into diskless workstations.  Thus, software
> initiators don't help.
> 
> Boot-time software initiators, like iBoot or PXE, have their place, but
> they are limited in the OSes that they support.  I continue to hope that
> (someday) I'll have affordable iSCSI HBAs that look to the BIOS - and to
> any booting operating system - as nothing more than a plain-old parallel
> SCSI adapter.
> 
> Perhaps that is a way off, at least before it is a commodity product.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> |---------+---------------------------->
> |         |           "Julian Satran"  |
> |         |           <Julian_Satran@il|
> |         |           .ibm.com>        |
> |         |           Sent by:         |
> |         |           owner-ips@ece.cmu|
> |         |           .edu             |
> |         |                            |
> |         |                            |
> |         |           04/11/03 04:18 PM|
> |         |                            |
> |---------+---------------------------->
>   >------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------|
>   |                                                                                                                              |
>   |       To:       Russell Lewis/Tucson/IBM@IBMUS                                                                               |
>   |       cc:       ips@ece.cmu.edu, owner-ips@ece.cmu.edu                                                                       |
>   |       Subject:  Re: Are there any coming iSCSI HBAs?  Preferably at 100Mb speed?                                             |
>   |                                                                                                                              |
>   >------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------|
> 
> 
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> 
> at 100Mbs you could definitly use software and a plain NIC. You won't feel
> iSCSI :-)
> 
> Julo
> 
>                                                                            
>  Russell                                                                   
>  Lewis/Tucson/IBM@IBMUS                                                    
>  Sent by:                                                                  
>  owner-ips@ece.cmu.edu                                                  To 
>                                       ips@ece.cmu.edu                      
>                                                                         cc 
>  11/04/03 19:25                                                            
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>                                       Are there any coming iSCSI HBAs?     
>                                       Preferably at 100Mb speed?           
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> 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?
> 
> 
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>