2009/6/3 Friedrich Locke <friedrich.lo...@gmail.com>: > Dear gentleman/madam, > > i would like to use openbsd in order to build a SAN solution, i.e., > one that provides block access to the box's disks. > I want to build a SAN, not a NAS. Is it possible? > > Thank in advance.
I'm no expert, and I've never worked with SANs, but since the defining characteristic of a SAN is that it makes remote storage devices appear locally attached to the OS, let me ask: Do you want remote storage devices appear locally attached to other OpenBSD servers, or to what kind of server? Granted, depending on the protocol used/design of your SAN it may not matter much, as things like SCSI, ATA over Ethernet, etc. ought to be OS-agnostic, but still I'm curious, and sort of trying to understand where you're going with this. Also --and I apologize if this is too trivial-- if I were asked to implement a SAN, I would first of all try to be specific and see what protocol would be required, or, if I were able/expected to build a new SAN from scratch and choose a protocol/decide how to implement it myself, then I'd try to figure out what makes the short list, and in this case, if any of those programs/drivers are available for, or can be ported to OpenBSD. I'd e.g. look at this list: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Storage_area_network#Network_types and google for those technologies in the misc archives (haven't done this, but I'm not the one gunning for a SAN). So precisely what SAN technologies/software/hardware are you trying to use with OpenBSD? For what it's worth, the opposite --accessing an existing SAN from OpenBSD-- seems to have been discussed in the past: http://marc.info/?t=123514246300004&r=1&w=2 regards, --ropers
