Jeff,
What I was trying to determine if there was a way to use ZFS on OpenSolaris
System z as a high speed space management vehicle while bypassing
conventional transport layers? For example, let¹s say there existed a way
to push data to the IO appliance cross-memory (guest to ZFZ, ZFS to guest)
such that an interface in the appliance could act as a local proxy for each
guest using the service.
Regards,
Gary
--. .- .-. -.--
0 ... living between the zeroes... 0
On 4/3/09 11:29 AM, "Jeff Savit" <jsa...@gmail.com> wrote:
> "Gary M. Dennis" wrote:
>> > 1. How does OpenSolaris zfs utilize the storage tier on System z? Are the
>> > disks allocated to zfs pool(s) simply reserved CMS formatted disks?
>
> Exactly that: minidisks used by OpenSolaris on z port ("sirius" for short) are
> CMS-formatted and RESERVE-d minidisks. That way sirius knows which minidisks
> to *not* touch.
>
>> > 2. How does the Async I/O in ZFS work? Would the guest that requested the
>> > I/O be signaled with an ext interrupt by the I/O appliance?
>
> Do you mean from the POSIX API level or at the virtual machine I/O level?
> ZFS obeys standard POSIX semantics for file I/O, including the ability to
> specify sync semantics.
> From the physical I/O perspective, everything is done by DIAG 250, which
> permits non-guest-blocking I/O.
>
>> > 3. What API/system transport layer would be used in VM for guests to
>> conduct
>> > I/O through an appliance managing ZFS?
>
> Not sure what you mean by this - could you explain? Guests running which OS
> talking to an appliance running where?
>
> regards, Jeff
>
