SLES 11 Shared LUN

SUSE Product Topics SLES Configure-Administer
1

Hi everybody

I wonder if it is possible to share a Suse 11 LUN via FC HBA. Thinking
about to use it as a really poor guy SAN.

Ideas?

Thanks in advance

–
jlocatell

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jlocatell;2152518 Wrote:[color=blue]

Hi everybody

I wonder if it is possible to share a Suse 11 LUN via FC HBA. Thinking
about to use it as a really poor guy SAN.

Ideas?

Thanks in advance[/color]

Haven’t ever tried that over FC & not sure what type of performance you
can expect on SLES…

There are SCSI target utils which can offer FC targets over certain
Qlogic cards, more about that project can be found here : ‘Linux SCSI
target framework (tgt) project’ (http://stgt.sourceforge.net/) I did a
quick search to see if there are any active openSUSE/SLES projects on
this… not really anything I could find.

Instead of FC, iSCSI is a very good option to use are a poor mans SAN.
Quite easy to setup too with SLES 11.

If it where me, I’d also be looking at a project like OpenFiler
(‘Openfiler — Openfiler - Open Source Storage Management
Appliance’ (http://www.openfiler.com/)) as it’s purpose is to share
storage as best as it can. Especially if you really want to go over FC.

But then again, others might chime in with better options. :slight_smile:

Would be good to hear how you go!

Cheers,
Willem

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3

jlocatell,

while “FC” and “really poor guy” seem rather contradictory (I’d go
for iSCSI), your question lacks some details:

  • What FC HBAs are you using, especially on the target box?
  • How many initiators would you need to serve the LUN?
  • Does the target server itself need access to the LUN locally?

While I have not used the target on SLES11 yet, I have rather positive
experience with SCST (scst.sourceforge.net) as a Linux target software.

Again, if “poor guy” applies, go with iSCSI. Iirc the iSCSI target
software comes with SLES11 out of the box.

Regards,
Jens

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