aren't you going to tell us more about it?

The June 2005 Re: ATA over ethernet (AoE)Linux Journal[/i] has a nice article on AoE.

AoE is new and promising. I'm looking forward to expermenting with it.

Here's the June 2005 Re: ATA over ethernet (AoE)Linux Journal[/i] article about AoE. It's a non-routable network protocol that's more primitive than IP, giving enough capability for a server to (1) identify existing AoE disks and (2) send ATA commands and transfer data as any other ATA disk controller. 

http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/8149

With gigabig ethernet, LVM, and filesystems that can be expanded, one has unlimited control over how the disks can be sliced and diced.

That last AoE comment is nonsensical.  It's like saying ISA bus is no good when you can use SCSI. Apples to tree trunks. AoE is faster and cleaner than iSCSI.

AoE is a way of transporting disk commands at layer two across the network.  The AoE  host may actually using be SATA or SCSI devices.

May I ask what you mean by having to install a stack for AoE? Did you mean the two layer Ethernet protocol as opposed to the iSCSI four layer TCP/IP protocol?

>what i wonder: are there any "target" implementations for that ? (in software, not in hardware)

there is!

actually, i gave AoE a try.

folks - this is cool stuf - and really trivial to get this working.

i wonder about that "big noise" regarding iSCSI.

Why isn´t there some more noise about AoE ?

who needs a storage protocol being routed over the internet?

AoE is small and elegant. I hope this will have a bright future!

roland

ps:

after reading back to the beginning of this thread, i would call this slightly off-topic, though

hello!

no - i didn`t try at all, because i`m not ESX user.

but i'm not sure, if this would work at all - ESX has not IDE/ATA "stack" at all (afaik)

regards

roland

Shoot,

Thats right I forgot about that VMFS is supposed to be on a scsi drive.  I will test this next week, when I have some time and post my results here.