c0t0d0s0.org

You see the Sun Fire X4500 with 48 disks and think: "Hmm, this would be a nice Storage Array". And you are right. The problem: You want to connect it via FC, not iSCSI. There was no simple way to do this. But things have changed yesterday.

The team around COMSTAR released their code and some packages yesterday. COMSTAR is the short version of "Common Multiprotocol SCSI Target". It´s a framework to consolidate all SCSI target implementation. Albeit it´s the first code drop but things look really interesting. They´ve implemented the FC target part first. So Installing Comstar and Getting started are two points to start from.

SAN is dead. Okay, it´s a bold statement, but i think there are several factors, that will lead to an shift in storage architecture within the next few years: Most of the times you need SAN to present a block device to a system that isn´t directly attached to the server. Instead you consolidate the storage at a cental place. Okay, but do you really need a different technology for this. Perhaps the different technology is a future obstacle itself. I want to make some points.