Friday April 08, 2005

A reader asked if we recommend IPMP (IP Multipathing) or Trunking. We tested and recommend IP Multipathing. We have a Sun Blueprints doc in the works that explains this better, including how it works with embedded storage multipathing (Traffic Manager) in the Solaris OS. Stay tuned for the Blueprints doc. I will post a pointer to it when it's published

Another alert reader pointed out that there ARE iSCSI HBAs (Host Bus Adapters) available that offload iSCSI and TCP/IP protocols with the ability to DMA data directly to/from the user's buffer. These offload the CPU just like Fibre Channel and SCSI HBAs, as well as providing an embedded BIOS for boot support. In my original posting when I said iSCSI uses the main processor, I was referring to the software driver integrated in Solaris 10 Update 1. ( Apr 08 2005, 12:58:09 PM PDT ) Permalink Comments [0]