Open-E iSCSI features

[Normanu]

Can Open-E pool multiple storage devices into a single logical volume ?
So is it possible to make a SAN array cluster ?
If so would this be done by setting a DSS as master and having the iSCSI R3 modules as slaves?
It is not completely clear to me from the feature pages etc.

And last question in the failover setup is the open-e setup also load balanced or is one of the devices just a hotspare ?
So can one read and write to both san's?

[To-M]

Can Open-E pool multiple storage devices into a single logical volume ?

The only way to do this is to create a Target from another DSS or iSCSI-R3 then use the built in iSCSI initiator from the DSS and add them to the Volume Manager to create a single Volume Group.

So is it possible to make a SAN array cluster ?

We provide an iSCSI Auto Failover feature with DSS only that only works with 2 x DSS server with Active / Passive function for multible iSCSI Logical Volumes. See link below for more details on how this works and setup procedures.

Library
Product Presentations:

http://www.open-e.com/library/product-presentations/

2008 - Open-E Volume Replication with Failover over a LAN, December

If so would this be done by setting a DSS as master and having the iSCSI R3 modules as slaves?

No, only DSS has the iSCSI Auto Failover feature.

And last question in the failover setup is the open-e setup also load balanced or is one of the devices just a hotspare?

In the Active / Passive setup the Source is written first then replicated to the Destination server and is not load balanced per say. If the Source server fails the Destination will promote itself to Active mode.

Please download the DSS Demo-CD to test with your environment. Link below allows you to download our 60 day evaluation of DSS.

http://www.open-e.com/account/register/demo/

[Robotbeat]

Normanu, this is the sort of thing that our company would have to do if someone wanted a petabyte storage array. We'd probably use RDMA for the connections between each of the nodes and the head node (which would have an auto-failover setup with another hot spare head node) in order to provide the necessary throughput. This is the sort of functionality which we'd probably have to contract some linux storage expert for $250/hr to help us engineer this sort of thing. It'd be a lot cheaper and easier and better to have Open-E have this sort of functionality, but it's just not there yet.

And, if you wait two or three years, you could pretty easily get this sort of functionality from a "pNFS" (parallel NFS) setup that I'm sure Open-E will eventually integrate into their storage boxes once it becomes mainstream in the standard linux kernel.

Really, if you want something like you're describing right now, you should look at the GFS2 cluster filesystem. I think you can still use Open-E iSCSI or Fibre Channel targets for the back-end storage. Of course, this probably won't work with Windows.