iSCSI for Mac OS X?

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Posted by Cliff on Tuesday February 18, 2003 @05:25AM from the hoping-apple-fills-this-gap-soon dept.

CoffeePlease asks: "Is anyone aware of development going on for iSCSI drivers for Mac OS X? I really need this but it's only out for Windows and Linux so far. I can't use the Linux drivers - they might run, but only as a command-line process, and I need other software to recognize the drives."

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Not to my knowledge by Matthias+Wiesmann · 2003-02-18 05:43 · Score: 4, Informative
- There is no mention of iSCSI on apple's site, and I never heard of apple supporting iSCSI.
- You cannot run Linux drivers on Mac OS X, drivers is one area where Darwin is very different from Linux. You might have more luck with BSD drivers.
- Running the drivers as command line makes little sense: drivers don't have much interfaces. You might need the command line to start or install drivers.
- Assuming an iSCSI driver existed for Mac OS X / Darwin, then the system could see a remote device and handle it. Assuming the file-system on this device would be supported by Darwin then all applications, with or without GUI would 'see' this file-system.
1. Re:Not to my knowledge by Draoi · 2003-02-18 05:50 · Score: 3, Informative
  
  You might have more luck with BSD drivers
  Nope, unfortunately. File system drivers for MacOS X would have to be written as a kext and would be IOKit-based. Totally un-BSD ...
  My first point of call would be the Darwin-Drivers mailing list and archives.
  
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2. Re:Not to my knowledge by questionlp · 2003-02-18 10:37 · Score: 2, Informative
  
  It may not be Mac OS X or Darwin-specific, but it seems that Intel is working with Wasabi Systems/NetBSD to work on getting iSCSI to run on NetBSD. Some of this may work up to Darwin, then into Mac OS X... but it will take a while, mostly when Apple is focusing on Fibre Channel with their XServe RAID units.
3. Re:Not to my knowledge by ZigMonty · 2003-02-18 22:07 · Score: 2, Informative
  
  Incorrect. Although device drivers are IOKit-based, the VFS layer of darwin (filesystems) is almost straight FreeBSD. There are problems with the fact that Darwin's locking is different and probably VM issues. You definitely can't just take a FreeBSD filesystem and throw it into Mac OS X but it would only be a porting effort, not a rewrite.
4. Re:Not to my knowledge by mkldev · 2003-02-19 09:40 · Score: 3, Informative
  
  File system drivers for MacOS X would have to be written as a kext and would be IOKit-based. Totally un-BSD ...
  
  If it were a file system, you would be wrong (since the VFS layer is basically BSD), but it isn't a file system; it's a block device. So yes, it would be an I/O Kit KEXT.
  
  However, to say that it's "totally un-BSD" is a stretch. BSD drivers are relatively easy to port to Mac OS X if they are written correctly. The wrapper tends to be relatively small, with additional changes needed for synchronization where applicable.
  
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iSCSI on Linux... by molo · 2003-02-18 05:54 · Score: 3, Informative

Looks like there is a project that is implementing it as a kernel-level driver (as it should be, IMO). It exports the device as /dev/sda (etc.). It certainly seems to be in active development.

http://linux-iscsi.sourceforge.net/

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oh, whatever by Twirlip+of+the+Mists · 2003-02-18 06:14 · Score: 3, Informative

Nobody "really needs" iSCSI. iSCSI isn't real yet. It's still one of those "coming soon" things, like Infiniband. And we saw how well Infiniband worked out.

iSCSI is just another way of solving a problem that's already been solved in any number of other ways. You need to attach a computer to some storage. Okay. You can use direct-attach FireWire storage. That has the advantage of being absolutely bullet-proof. Or you can use Fibre Channel to attach to a switched fabric. That works fine, too; just present a LUN to the Mac and let it format and mount it. Or you can use a network storage technology, like AppleShare or NFS. Those work fine, too, and the Power Macs, PowerBooks, and xServes are all shipping with 1000BASE-T, so that's not a problem.

There are any number of ways to ameliorate your so-called "real need" for iSCSI. These work today. Use them.

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1. Re:oh, whatever by aderusha · 2003-02-18 06:55 · Score: 4, Interesting
  
  1) firewire - no managment, just loose drives attached to single machines. might as well suggest a usb memory stick. firewire drives don't make a san.
  
  2) fibre channel - cost of entry approaching $50k. that adds up to about 50k reasons not to use it on a home machine or small network.
  
  3) network storage - not really a block level disk access technology, is it?
  
  i think the real reason is that very few people are using macs in a data center serving up real applications to lots of clients - the sorta place where a well managed SAN makes sense. now that the draft standard has been finalized (but not ratified), i imagine that you'll see iSCSI becoming more commoditized and more software being made available for more OSs.
  
  note that the windows and linux software packages are only iSCSI initiators - i haven't seen any software based iSCSI targets. this means that even if you did port the code to Darwin you'd still have to have some storage device out there speaking iSCSI to point your mac at.
2. Re:oh, whatever by gerardrj · 2003-02-18 07:25 · Score: 2, Interesting
  
  Eccept that in my experience most Datacenters are migrating to net attached storage. People are tired of SANs, the high chost of parts and maintenence, the difficultly and expense of backing up, etc.
  Sure... it SOUNDS great to have 5TB of storage in one unit, but just exactly how do you keep current off-site backups? Oh... that's right... you maintain another 5TB unit in another location and run a dedicated T3 between them, yea... THAT'S affordable.
  
  The SAN was a great idea, Fiber Channel was a great idea, but it never reached critical mss, and now distributed network storage is taking over. iSCSI will propbaly make some inroads, but it will never replace a simple device with network ports actining as a server. The latter is cheap, esily understood, easily maintained, provides 95% of the functionality necessary to any IT department, and the clients are built in to every major OS on the market.
  
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3. Re:oh, whatever by Anonymous Coward · 2003-02-18 08:35 · Score: 3, Informative
  
  ------
  1) firewire - no managment, just loose drives attached to single machines. might as well suggest a usb memory stick. firewire drives don't make a san.
  ------
  
  no, firewire drives can be attached to many machines
  at the same time. there -are- firewire san solutions out
  there right now.
  
  ------
  2) fibre channel - cost of entry approaching $50k. that adds up to about 50k reasons not to use it on a home machine or small network.
  ------
  
  no, have a look at Apple's Xraid box. Much cheaper than
  $50k.
  
  ------
  i think the real reason is that very few people are using macs in a data center serving up real applications to lots of clients - the sorta place where a well managed SAN makes sense. now that the draft standard has been finalized (but not ratified), i imagine that you'll see iSCSI becoming more commoditized and more software being made available for more OSs.
  ------
  
  I think the main reason that macs are doing that job
  is that there haven't been any mac capable of doing
  that job.
4. Re:oh, whatever by benh57 · 2003-02-18 14:36 · Score: 2, Informative
  
  Your fibre channel numbers are way off. You can get an XServe RAID Fibre Channel and 2.5TB for $10999. The FC host PCI card from apple is $499. 400MB/s throughput.
5. Re:oh, whatever by Anonymous Coward · 2003-02-18 16:03 · Score: 2, Informative
  
  The 50K number isn't off the mark really. The $12,000 for XRAID buys you just two arrays attachable to two servers. If you want to put the XRAID behind one or two (for redundancy) fiber channel switches. Those run as much or more than the XRAID itself.
  
  One of the benefits of iSCSI would be that the very pricey FC Switched network would be unecessary -- you could leverage your LAN.
6. Re:oh, whatever by gerardrj · 2003-02-19 10:04 · Score: 2, Insightful
  
  But neither SQL nor Exchange require disk level access. Neither app has special version for ATA, SCSI, SAN or NAT storage space. VERY few apps actually require phyical device access (sending commands directly to hardware instead of through the OSI abstractions), or even block level access.
  The few that I can think of are disk repair an maintenance utilities.
  Running SQL servers over NAT, NFS or any other sort of "soft" mount works just fine.
  
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Let me get this right... by hmccabe · 2003-02-18 07:03 · Score: 4, Funny

it's called iSCSI and it's on every platform but Apple's? It seems a bit like Apple naming rendezvous GnuIPdetect.
Whoa. Are you confused. by porkchop_d_clown · 2003-02-18 14:27 · Score: 3, Informative

As some writing SRP drivers for a living - iSCSI is a protocol that allows you to send SCSI commands between to machines linked by TCP/IP. It doesn't "bridge" IP and SCSI - it's not like you can use it to ping your hard drive.

The intent of iSCSI is to allow people to build SANs without having to shell out actual money for a fibre channel installation.

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