COMSTAR: Common Multiprotocol SCSI Target

One of the new Solaris Storage projects that our test development team is currently implementing test infrastructure for is called COMSTAR. The overview of the project from the OpenSolaris.org COMSTAR page is:

COMSTAR is the software framework to use a Solaris host as a SCSI Target platform. COMSTAR uses modular approach to break the huge task of handling all the different pieces in a SCSI target subsystem into independent functional modules which are glued together by the SCSI Target Mode Framework (STMF). The modules implementing functionality at SCSI level (disk, tape, medium changer etc.) are not required to know about the underlying transport. And the modules implementing the transport protocol (Fibre Channel, iSCSI etc.) are not aware of the SCSI level functionality of the packets they are transporting. The framework hides the details of allocation, providing execution context and cleanup of SCSI commands and associated resources and simplifies the task of writing the SCSI or transport modules.

COMSTAR features include:

• Extensive LUN Masking and mapping functions.
• Multipathing across different transport protocols.
• Multiple parallel transfers per SCSI command.
• Scalable design approach.
• Works with generic HBAs.

Posted at 11:10AM Jan 29, 2008 by erick in China  |  Comments[1]

Bummer: Sun Club trip to Saipan canceled

Our office in Beijing has a gong hui (工会) called Sun Club. They get funding for various morale activities, and they provide employees a few thousand kuai each year to participate in team outings. So far, there have been trips to Guilin, Yunnan, Huangshan, and a number of other tourist places in China.

I was really looking forward to going on the trip to Saipan. My impression is that it is a backwater military outpost island, something like Guam. I'm not sure exactly why Chinese tourists would be so excited to go to a place like Saipan, but for me it would have been a real novelty. They supposedly have some good scuba diving to boot, so I'm sure it would have been fun.

Unfortunately, it looks like the the event didn't get enough confirmations, perhaps because it was a bit on the expensive side by local standards. Sun Club pays for the first CNY 2,500, and then the difference, in this case, probably CNY 3,000 additional, need to be paid by the employee. Officially, there need to be a certain number of people, maybe ten or so, before it can be considered an official Sun Club trip and receive official funding.

I'm glad that Sun Club was even considering this type of strange and out of the way destination, and I hope that we get the chance to go there in the future.

Posted at 12:01PM Nov 06, 2007 by erick in China  |  Comments[2]

OpenSolaris Test Farm

Everyone in the OpenSolaris community should read about the OpenSolaris test farm that Solaris Quality Engineering is highly involved in.

I'm very excited about this test farm. It will be a very useful tool to many OpenSolaris contributers.

Posted at 04:53PM Oct 16, 2007 by erick in Software Engineering  | 

Spirent Avalanche 2500

Our lab infrastructure in Sun Beijing ERI has steadily improved over time. One of the unique and important pieces of network test equipment that we use is the Spirent Avalanche 2500.

From the FAQ:

What is Avalanche 2500?
Avalanche 2500 is an award-winning capacity assessment tool that challenges your networking infrastructure and applications to stand up to the load and complexity of real-world traffic. It delivers performance, realism, a wide range of protocols and ease of use in a single, easy-to-deploy appliance. Avalanche 2500 helps you determine the performance capabilities, bottlenecks and points of failure of a single device, a network or a complete end-to-end system.

Here's a good screenshot of the analyzer application that I got from this web site.

The Avalanche has been useful to us from a network stress testing perspective, especially to simulate FTP and HTTP scenarios. In conjunction with SmartBits, we're able to provide excellent network stress testing at the most critical portions of the networking stack, for relatively low engineering overhead.

Posted at 09:13AM Sep 04, 2007 by erick in Networking  |