On Sat, 2013-11-02 at 17:43 +0100, Thomas Glanzmann wrote: > Hello Nab, > I would like to build a FCOE lab environment. If possible, one target, > two initiators with the possibility to use them under Linux and ESX with > a software FCOE stack and probably a switch. I don't want to spend 10 000 EURs > on a 10Gbit switch and wonder if you can recommend a vendor? I looked at > the following card from Intel: > > http://ark.intel.com/products/58954/Intel-Ethernet-Converged-Network-Adapter-X540-T2 > > Do you have any experience with the network card and can you recommend > it? It seems to be well supported under Linux and also ESX including > software FCOE. The Intel 82599 (x520) NICs work well, and also have some built-in FCoE offloads. FYI, they are particularly sensitive wrt to optical GBICs, so I'd very much recommend using copper direct attached cables if at all possible. > > As I understand it FCOE only works over lossless ethernet. Lossless > ethernet has the ability to send pause and unpause frames and does not > reorder or loose packets. That's not exactly true. It's still completely possible to run FCoE over normal 1 Gb/sec ports in VN2VN mode (eg: point to point) without Lossless ethernet. > However in the past lossless ethernet does not > seem to be standarized and had a few problems: It only works over a > single layer 2 hop, it does not work cross-vendor (e.g. is not > standardized), link aggregation does not work because that out of order > transmissions would be possible which breaks FCOE, lossy traffic gets > paused by lossless traffic and so one. So I wonder what the current > state of lossless ethernet is? I saw FCOE in Cisco UCS blades and HP > Blades but they always use Internet Connect Bays or Top of the Rack > switches to change it in FC and than go to a FC storage. I wonder if it > is these days possible to go end-to-end. I noticed that some storage > arrays like EMC VNX, HP 3PAR, Hitachi HDS and so on support but I never > seen an environment where it was end-to-end not even over a single layer > 2 HOP. > > I would appreciate if you or someone else could shed some light into > the lossless ethernet topic. > Mmm, this would be a type of question for Robert Love + MDR. (CC'ed) --nab -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe target-devel" in the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
