Turning a Linux PC into a SAN Storage Device ?

Hi

I wonder if any of you guys can help me out with this; I'm pretty new
to all of this so please forgive me if I ask any daft questions...!

We currently have a FC network, to which is attached a Sony High Data
Rate tape drive - this all works fine, we can read/write data to this
device from attached FC clients OK.

What we need to be able to do, is also connect a Linux PC to the FC
network, and read/write data to it, the same way as the Sony drive.
The data could either be on one of the PCs disks, or on a tape drive
attached via SCSI to the PC.

Obviously the PC isn't a "normal" FC storage device, and the
application on the clients won't be able to talk to the PC in the same
way as the Sony drive.

Is there some way we can make the Linux PC appear as a FC storage
device - so that no changes are required at the client end (which are
running a more specialised, realtime OS) and we can access just like
we do to the Sony drive ?

The PC is a Dell Precision PC, running RedHat Enterprise 3 WS, and is
fitted with a QLogic QLA2200 FC HBA. It is fitted with SCSI hard
drives and CD/DVD, and also has a LTO2 tape drive attached via SCSI.

Any suggestions ?

We need to achieve a data transfer rate of at least 20MB/s.

Many thanks for your help !
Lee

Lee Wild wrote:
Hi

....

Is there some way we can make the Linux PC appear as a FC storage
device - so that no changes are required at the client end (which are
running a more specialised, realtime OS) and we can access just like
we do to the Sony drive ?

The PC is a Dell Precision PC, running RedHat Enterprise 3 WS, and is
fitted with a QLogic QLA2200 FC HBA. It is fitted with SCSI hard
drives and CD/DVD, and also has a LTO2 tape drive attached via SCSI.


there is scsi target driver for linux (beta version)
( http://scst.sourceforge.net/ ). Never tried it, so I don't know if it
has all required funcionality for now, but maybe it is worth checking



Jaroslaw Weglinski

Lee Wild wrote:
snip

Any suggestions ?


If you insist on LINUX for the machine, then FalconStor
(www.falconstor.com) is a possibility if you are flexible about the OS
platform, then DataCore (www.datacore.com) is worth a look as well. Both
have products that can take a standard PC and serve its disks up as FC
or iSCSI targets. Falconstor also offers tape emulation.

--
Nik Simpson

Thanks for the suggestions - the SCST Sourceforge project looks
interesting, off to do some further reading !

Cheers
Lee

On Thu, 31 Mar 2005 20:58:41 +0200, Jaroslaw Weglinski
-invalid wrote:


there is scsi target driver for linux (beta version)
( http://scst.sourceforge.net/ ). Never tried it, so I don't know if it
has all required funcionality for now, but maybe it is worth checking


There is one big problem with the SCST project. It does not provide any LUN
security. From what I looked at, you can't LUN mask which means that everybody
will be able to write to anybody's disk.

Any suggestions ?


Check out the www.pavitrasoft.com Mayastor.
We have used it with great success.


Priit

NexiTech, Inc. (www.nexitech.com) has a hardware/software product that can
turn a Windows PC (2K and later) into a Storage Appliance that serves up
disks and tapes and libraries and other peripherals over SCSI, Fibre
Channel, and iSCSI. It also has Tape Emulation for D2D enhanced backup, and
Data Migration for D2D2T enhanced backup. But no Linux support at this
time.






"Lee Wild" wrote in message
om...
Hi

I wonder if any of you guys can help me out with this; I'm pretty new
to all of this so please forgive me if I ask any daft questions...!

We currently have a FC network, to which is attached a Sony High Data
Rate tape drive - this all works fine, we can read/write data to this
device from attached FC clients OK.

What we need to be able to do, is also connect a Linux PC to the FC
network, and read/write data to it, the same way as the Sony drive.
The data could either be on one of the PCs disks, or on a tape drive
attached via SCSI to the PC.

Obviously the PC isn't a "normal" FC storage device, and the
application on the clients won't be able to talk to the PC in the same
way as the Sony drive.

Is there some way we can make the Linux PC appear as a FC storage
device - so that no changes are required at the client end (which are
running a more specialised, realtime OS) and we can access just like
we do to the Sony drive ?

The PC is a Dell Precision PC, running RedHat Enterprise 3 WS, and is
fitted with a QLogic QLA2200 FC HBA. It is fitted with SCSI hard
drives and CD/DVD, and also has a LTO2 tape drive attached via SCSI.

Any suggestions ?

We need to achieve a data transfer rate of at least 20MB/s.

Many thanks for your help !
Lee