[Ksummit-2008-discuss] Kernel Summit Request for Discussion: The Future of Target mode and Cloud storage on Linux

[Nicholas A. Bellinger]

On Wed, 2008-08-20 at 20:56 -0400, Dave Jones wrote:
> On Wed, Aug 20, 2008 at 05:36:17PM -0700, Nicholas A. Bellinger wrote:
>  
>  > I could not think of a better group to have this discussion in front of,
>  > as we storage folks left to our own devices could not settle on a
>  > solution.  So having some inpartial kernel devels around who can also
>  > have a look at the proposals is invaluable IMHO.  :-)
> 
> Part of the problem is the majority of the room won't have a slightest idea
> what most of this is even about.  I lost count how many acronyms you've
> dropped in the last 2-3 mails that I failed to parse, and I'm fairly
> confident the same will be true for most summit attendees, who will just
> tune out and spend the session reading email.
> 

So yes, we storage folks are used to this.  But the primary topic of
interest is the kernel level requirement for a generic target mode
engine, and the steps to achieve that goal for upstream code.  I don't
expect the hardcore technical details to be settled in a topical
discussion, but I am at least hoping that for the sysfs control piece
for this generic engine that some basic agreements can be made for the
benefit of the userspace projects who are left dependent on out of tree
and project dependent control path interfaces for their work.

Again for there, it comes down to the basic design question:

Will the kernel mode target engine be based on SCSI and live in
drivers/iscsi, or should the target engine use common code to provide
infrastructure for SCSI and non SCSI based storage fabrics..?

--nab

> 	Dave
>