Performance and cheap storage

[Phil Brutsche]

Greg A. Woods wrote:
> not yet in smart controllers that simply make it look like a more 
> traditional storage device thus off-loading all the protocol handling
> to a dedicated control processor

I should point out that those controllers exist, but are rare and have
limited OS support: Adaptec's 7211C gigabit iSCSI HBAs
(http://www.adaptec.com/en-US/products/iscsi/) or QLogic's QLA4050C
iSCSI HBA (http://qlogic.com/products/iscsi_products_hba.asp), for example.

BTW, like most of Adaptec's other controllers the 7211[CF] is
effectively Windows-only, and the QLogic controller is very likely too
new to work with most platforms Cyrus runs on.  It's not that the QLogic
card won't ever work with (say) FreeBSD, it's that FreeBSD's driver's
most likely aren't up-to-date enough to work with the card at this point.

Without one of those cards iSCSI is a CPU hog. Sadly, a second CPU (or
an upgrade to dual-core CPU) is cheaper...

-- 

Phil Brutsche
phil at optimumdata.com