Fibre Channel Target?

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DBayPlaya2k3

Member
Nov 9, 2012
72
4
8
Houston
Anyone know of any way to make a Fiber Channel Target in Windows?

I know starwind has some software but its only for the iniator and i need something for the target.

Yes I know open-filer and various linux distros will make a target but im curious of if anything works for windows.


Thanks
 

33_viper_33

Member
Aug 3, 2013
204
3
18
Anyone know of any way to make a Fiber Channel Target in Windows?

I know starwind has some software but its only for the iniator and i need something for the target.

Yes I know open-filer and various linux distros will make a target but im curious of if anything works for windows.


Thanks
I'm guessing you are trying to do so in a workstation version of windows and not a server. Windows server has this capability built in.
 

DBayPlaya2k3

Member
Nov 9, 2012
72
4
8
Houston
No I am trying to do it in server 2012. Would u please tell me where this is at as I can not find anywhere to present a "Target" in windows. For iscsi there is a GUI for fibrechannel no such luck...
 

33_viper_33

Member
Aug 3, 2013
204
3
18
Sorry to miss lead you. Thought you were trying to use windows as an initiator. You will need software to make windows a target. I've never played with this configuration to be able to recommend something.
 

NISMO1968

[ ... ]
Oct 19, 2013
87
13
8
San Antonio, TX
www.vmware.com
StarWind has FCoE initiator available for public download. They also have kernel-mode AoE and FCoE targets they don't distribute. StarWind has no FC target (FC != FCoE).

Anyone know of any way to make a Fiber Channel Target in Windows?

I know starwind has some software but its only for the iniator and i need something for the target.

Yes I know open-filer and various linux distros will make a target but im curious of if anything works for windows.


Thanks
 

mrkrad

Well-Known Member
Oct 13, 2012
1,244
52
48
without a decent V2V fcoe target is not likely to work so hot (with everything else).

FC target? I think there is a free unix one with ESOS - some FC cards can be both a target and client at the same time :)

FC is justs scsi over network. With lossless networking. ISCSI is the same but relies on TCP/IP for lossless networking.

honestly smb3 is going to work better on windows.. cheaper too
 

DBayPlaya2k3

Member
Nov 9, 2012
72
4
8
Houston
Yep SMB Would be awesome but its not supported by VMware only hyper-v . I am using windows server for storage back end and VMware for host front end. I wanted to play with FCOE but without a target it seems impossible.
 

cesmith9999

Well-Known Member
Mar 26, 2013
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DataCore costs like an Golden Gate Bridge :( It's cheaper to buy EMC VNX then any entry level license for DataCore (and you still have to buy Windows licenses and actual hardware you'd use to run Windows and DataCore).
You asked how to do it. Now you understand one reason why we did not choose them for virtualizing our storage platform. Historical reporting was the other main one...
 
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tby

Active Member
Aug 22, 2013
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43
Snellville, GA
set-inform.com
Yes I know open-filer and various linux distros will make a target but im curious of if anything works for windows.
There's nothing free or reasonably priced for Windows FC/FCoE targets (you'd think MS would just build that in to Windows Storage Server). ESOS is working well for me but it wasn't intuitive to get started with.
 

cesmith9999

Well-Known Member
Mar 26, 2013
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MS is hedging on SMB 3.0 and SMB Direct to get similar functionality. the FC infrastructure is soo expensive.
 

Anton aus Tirol

New Member
Oct 20, 2013
10
2
1
FC comes to play when you think about latency. Real world latency for FC is much lower compared to one converged Ethernet can do.

SMB 3.0 is not going to be better. It's still point-to-point to does not scale with a single initiator talking to many targets (the same scenario
works fine for both FC and iSCSI configured to Round Robin MPIO).

[ ... ]

FC is justs scsi over network. With lossless networking. ISCSI is the same but relies on TCP/IP for lossless networking.

honestly smb3 is going to work better on windows.. cheaper too
 

Anton aus Tirol

New Member
Oct 20, 2013
10
2
1
I did not ask about how to do this as I'm an iSCSI zealot :)

Could you please elaborate on why you did skip DataCore? Except price? What kind of reporting is missing?

You asked how to do it. Now you understand one reason why we did not choose them for virtualizing our storage platform. Historical reporting was the other main one...
 

Anton aus Tirol

New Member
Oct 20, 2013
10
2
1
Microsoft is pusing SMB 3.0 because it has no clustered file system capable or comparable to VMFS. LUN owner switch with NTFS is VERY expensive
and Microsoft ODX has no ATS equivalent coming with VMware / VAAI.

MS is hedging on SMB 3.0 and SMB Direct to get similar functionality. the FC infrastructure is soo expensive.
 

Anton aus Tirol

New Member
Oct 20, 2013
10
2
1
Don't even try to feed NFS from Windows. It's a performance joke :( iSCSI is fine from the other point of view. You may try to use StarWind Free
stuff for both performance and fault tolerance as Windows target has N/A.

Yep SMB Would be awesome but its not supported by VMware only hyper-v . I am using windows server for storage back end and VMware for host front end. I wanted to play with FCOE but without a target it seems impossible.
 

DBayPlaya2k3

Member
Nov 9, 2012
72
4
8
Houston
Don't even try to feed NFS from Windows. It's a performance joke :( iSCSI is fine from the other point of view. You may try to use StarWind Free
stuff for both performance and fault tolerance as Windows target has N/A.
Yeah no kidding I was experimenting this weekend using NFS and ISCSI in Windows.

Disk Throughput on Storage Server (24TB after formatting and parity via Raid 5 using 10Gig Nics)


Raw Disks Speed

Read - 907 MBps

Write - 740 MBps


NFS

Read - 846 MBps

Write - 362 MBps



ISCSI

Read - 719 MBps

Write - 588 MBps
 
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Anton aus Tirol

New Member
Oct 20, 2013
10
2
1
If you've used Windows built-in iSCSI you need to keep in mind it's not cached (NFS is). Also run I/O Meter to see average I/O response time and measure IOPS for ramdom I/O
(4 threads, 16 I/Os in queue and 100% random / 100% seq) I/O.

Yeah no kidding I was experimenting this weekend using NFS and ISCSI in Windows.

Disk Throughput on Storage Server (24TB after formatting and parity via Raid 5 using 10Gig Nics)


Raw Disks Speed

Read - 907 MBps

Write - 740 MBps


NFS

Read - 846 MBps

Write - 362 MBps



ISCSI

Read - 719 MBps

Write - 588 MBps
 

cesmith9999

Well-Known Member
Mar 26, 2013
1,417
468
83
I did not ask about how to do this as I'm an iSCSI zealot :)

Could you please elaborate on why you did skip DataCore? Except price? What kind of reporting is missing?
When we were looking at DataCore, we wanted historical data, in a local DB so we could look at I/O and capacity trends. At that time they did not have that functionality outside of home built PowerShell scripts to populate DB's with anything other than the last 24 hours of data.

there were a whole lot of other things that they were good at. like virtualizing any storage out. and backend migration of data to other tiers of storage without downtime.