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Project: iSCSI Extensions for Remote DMA (iSER)
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OpenSolaris Project: iSCSI Extensions for Remote DMA (iSER)

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Introduction

iSER accelerates the iSCSI protocol by mapping the data transfer phases to Remote DMA (RDMA) operations. As a result an iSER initiator should be able to read and write data from an iSER target at high data rates with relatively low CPU utilization compared to iSCSI using TCP/IP. This project will implement both an iSER initiator and an iSER target. In addition, the project will implement an iSCSI port provider (iscsit) for COMSTAR adding an iSCSI transport option to the existing Fibre Channel and SAS support. The iSER target will be an extension of this iSCSI port provider.

To maximize the code sharing between iSER initiator and iSER target the current iSER design defines a component called "iSCSI Data Mover" (IDM). The iSCSI initiator and iSCSI target port provider will link against the IDM kernel module which will provide iSCSI connection services and a transport abstraction layer. iSER will be implemented beneath this abstraction layer allowing both initiator and target to use a single shared iSER implementation.

Based on this design the project will deliver the following components:

iSCSI Initiator modified to use IDM
iSCSI COMSTAR port provider (iscsit)
iSCSI Data Mover kernel module (IDM)
iSER transport plugin for IDM

Although the iSER protocol can be used with any RDMA-capable network, the scope of this project is currently limited to Infiniband.

Status

Binary packages and source tarballs are posted weekly (see links below). Read the release notes for information on the current states of the builds.

Documentation

Source code

The COMSTAR ISCSI Port Provider source is provided under the CDDL license.

This code is based on the COMSTAR source tree.

Mercurial repository

The Mercurial repository is at hg.opensolaris.org/hg/iser/iser-on.

Obtain a clone like this: hg clone ssh://anon at hg dot opensolaris dot org/hg/iser/iser-on

Tarballs

COMSTAR ISCSI Port Provider (iscsit) source tarball (8/26/08)

To build the tarball you would start with a NWS consolidation source tree, add the COMSTAR source then add the iSCSI port provider source. It may be simpler to use the Mercurial repository.

Binaries

These bits are not completely stable and may panic or core dump in some situations. The iSCSI port provider is approaching a beta level of stability while iSER is still pre-alpha. See the Release Notes for more info.