Talk:ISCSI

message: The linked article on "Build your on iSCSI SAN" is not a howto or instructional paper of any kind. It's just plain advertisement for an iSCSI-based SAN-solution by Transtec. -- patrickb — Preceding unsigned comment added by 172.181.133.60 (talk • contribs) 16:02, 23 March 2006
* Seconded and done. -- Cy jvb 17:53, 24 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: RFE

message: This section is fine from a user perspective, though it could use a better title.  However, the discussion about the initiator-target relationship is a gross oversimplification that is somewhat incorrect.  A bit of discussion on having multiple initiators communicating with a single target is presented in the Storage Devices section.  In SCSI (regardless of the transport mechanism), you MAY have multiple initiators.  This is useful when clustering disk storage or using SCSI Reservations so that multiple servers can share a tape library ("SAN Storage Options" in backup software parlance).  The burden of managing multiple initiators is generally placed on the software, drivers, or OS on the servers sharing the devices.
I will make changes soon if it is not edited.  
-- Cy jvb 18:17, 5 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: iSCSI terminology and how iSCSI can be used by an OS Section

message: There is a lot of listing of companies and there products on the page, some sections ignoring alternative vendors completely, eg under "iSCSI to Fibre Channel, SAS/SATA or SCSI" there is no mention of Broccade, McData, Crossroads, Bridgeworks, Paralan... in favor of Atto.  Do we strip details of vendors, or try to expand to cover a fair selection of all vendors, and possibly there target markets (Atto favor digital video markets and have apple support, McData large SAN environments etc). --SHayter 01:05, 15 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  NPOV? 

message: It's not clear at all what the difference is between iSCSI and, say, a networked share is to a Windows computer.  What is the difference in say performance or speed?  Is there any?  It seems to me that it would be pertinent to compare this storage solution against more commonly understood solutions that are commonly employed in most networks today.  As far as I can tell from the article as it stands, the only difference is that it uses SCSI commands over an ethernet network but it tells me nothing of performance compared against a Samba share which is identical except for the protocol over an ethernet network.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 205.248.102.81 (talk) 15:48, 5 November 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Your question is answered by clicking on the link for "Storage Area Network", which in turn gives details of the SAN/NAS diference, where Samba is an example of a NAS protocol. --SHayter (talk) 01:56, 3 March 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: How does iSCSI differ from Samba or simple networked access?

message: This article is very vague to a "non-techie".
At the very least, shouldn't a description of iSCSI be in the first paragraph of this article?
--angrykeyboarder (a/k/a:Scott) 21:26, 8 November 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I'd agree.  It needs some help.  Can you help? Paul Koning 01:06, 9 November 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  See iSCSI. What do we think? --- tqbf 01:52, 9 November 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  Much better.  I'm sure the article can use all manner of polishing but this really helps the intro.   Paul Koning 18:08, 9 November 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: What is iSCSI?

message: I've done a lot of work with iSCSI and want to get better at fixing up WP articles. 
I've rewritten the lede, started reworking iSCSI#Functionality, and rewritten iSCSI#Security (which was just weird before).
What's a hit list of things we need to fix up? I recognize that this article used to have some very vendor-y stuff on it before,  but it looks like most of that has been scrubbed. Some thoughts:
* The OS Support Overview needs to be cleaned up. I'm not sure the table works; for instance, Linux iSCSI support is "interesting" and deserves a sentence or two.
* Unfortunately for iSCSI proponents, this article has a glossary issue --- what's a CDB? What's a LUN? What's an HBA?
* I think we could merge iSCSI#Addressing and Name formats and "Terminology" into an "iSCSI Concepts" section.
* I'd like to get some protocol documentation in here (header fields and the like). Header diagrams are to tech articles what photographs are to WP:BIO articles, yo!
Thoughts welcome. I'm happy to do the grunt work of churning out words if someone else wants to provide guidance and editorial help.
--- tqbf 18:57, 9 November 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Re glossary issue: agreed.  For the most part (the examples you mentioned) those are SCSI terms rather than iSCSI terms.  They might be in a SCSI article; if not that's where the detailed explanation belongs. Paul Koning 20:57, 9 November 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  That's true, except that it's hard to understand some of iSCSI without knowing things like what a LUN is. I think the bright line is, if iSCSI admins need to know the concept, even if it's a SCSI term, it deserves summary coverage here. By that guidance, we wouldn't put CDB layouts here, but would put LUNs. --- tqbf 21:00, 9 November 2007 (UTC)

text: Agreed. "Backchannel" in this context doesn't make any sense. A backchannel or return channel of some kind can be taken for granted in any IP network. I vote for removing it. --Zac67 (talk) 16:59, 19 March 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Let's Clean This Up 

message: I'd like to start doing more diagrams for technical WP pages, and I'd like to start with this article. Anybody got suggestions for things that would benefit from pictures?
--- tqbf 17:19, 12 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Perhaps a picture of several computers, several targets and a SAN cloud connecting them all. It could illustrate the concepts of initiator, target and LUNs on that target.  You could also include sample names of devices on the initiator and target. Aarondailey (talk) 03:27, 13 December 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Request suggestions for diagrams 

message: Hey Guys,
So, I put in the list of iSCSI software targets, and I don't understand why it was removed.  Please site a documented reason for why such information doesn't help fulfill Wikipedia's mission to "Store All Human Knowledge".  The information in that table, represents weeks of work to gather, and could be extremely valuable to others.  It isn't a list of products, most of the links were to opensource projects.
For now, I have put it in my own wiki, and added an external link.
Joey Novak (talk) 18:12, 21 January 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: "Store all human knowledge"?  I don't know about that, but it certainly isn't Wikipedia's mission to store every conceivable list.  Paul Koning (talk) 19:16, 21 January 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  iSCSI Software Targets 

message: some discussion of what can and cannot be done via iscsi would be welcome.  for instance can a host boot via iscsi or swap to an iscsi target?  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.136.108.216 (talk) 19:24, 9 February 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: You could put swap on an iSCSI disk but it would be a bad idea which should only be reserved for diskless systems. Swap on a local disk is already slower than RAM and the odds are that swap on an iSCSI disk would be slower still. Further, you will face the same issue of swap over NBD - you can end up in a vicious circle that causes deadlock in low memory conditions. The system decides to send something to swap because its out of memory but the iSCSI initiator needs to allocate some memory and now also makes the system want to move something to swap but now you need even more memory because you need to send the swap memory away using the network and the network packets themselves need allocations that make the system want to move some unused memory into swap... 147.147.62.90 (talk) 05:03, 1 September 2016 (UTC)
replies: text:  The iSCSI intiator should never be in a condition to use virtual memory. It's the same as with any other storage or kernel mode driver. Of course, iSCSI means the same for the IP stack but I'd guess it's implemented that way anyway. Booting and swapping over iSCSI is common for virtual machines, for instance. --Zac67 (talk) 06:31, 1 September 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  swap over iscsi? 

message: Is it similar to IRQs, or is their more complex to it then I thought?
By the way is their some sort of specification in the industry that describes SCSI BIOS interface. I mean for regular SCSI storage, not for iSCSI.
--Ramu50 (talk) 06:46, 10 June 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  About how LUN works 

message: This article leaves me with the impression that iSCSI is the best storage protocol ever.  How does it compare with NFS and other protocols?  Does it have any disadvantages whatsoever? --KJRehberg (talk) 21:42, 29 June 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: You can't really compare iSCSI to NFS directly as they are operating at slightly different levels - iSCSI serves up SCSI block level storage whereas NFS serves up a filesystem (NFS itself needs block storage beneath it). Additionally this particular question was answered earlier on this talk page. 146.90.185.152 (talk) 05:29, 5 June 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Disadvantages of iSCSI 

message: :host#tgt-admin -e
:cli#iscsiadm -m discovery -t sendtargets -p 10.1.1.1 -o update
:cli#iscsiadm -m discoveryd -t sendtargets -p 10.1.1.1 
:cli#iscsiadm -m node --targetname iqn... --login
::cli#fdisk -l  
save time — Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.90.196.227 (talk) 18:05, 6 February 2017 (UTC)
thread_title: tgt