SW iSCSI Initiator to use TOE?

[boyedav]

IIRC, one of the drawbacks to the SW initiator was the need for to add a bulky TCP stack to the VMWare kernel. It also seems like more NICs are shipping with TOE capabilities.

Does anyone know of any plans for the SW initiator to be able to use TOE?

[Texiwill]

Hello,

There are iSCSI specific TOE (QLA) cards that are supported. Even so some part of the SC is necessary to be on the same subnet as the iSCSI server even with these however. Generic TOE cards are a different story.

Best regards,

Edward

Message was edited by:

Texiwill

[boyedav]

We actually are using the QLA4050, and hopefully the QLE4060 will be supported as a PCIe HBA.

I'm thinking more in terms of the VMWare SW Initiator becoming TOE-aware. Take the TCP stack out of VMKernel, and support the TOE capability of NICs that are already supported for non-TOE use. It seems like TOE might also be useful for VMotion, but to be able to use the SW iSCSI Initiator without the CPU overhead and without the need for an iSCSI HBA would be really cool.

[Branyanu]

Do we have any information on when the QLE4060 (PCIe version of the QLA4050) will be approved? Most of the servers we are using have PCIe and NO PCIx slots.

[Jae_Ellers]

I think I've seen that VMware is working on this. Since 3.0.2 dropped without it I'd expect we won't see it until the next major release, 3.1 maybe? At least we have a reason to start wondering when the \*next* release will be now that 3.0.2 landed.

[Texiwill]

Hello,

There is a toss up on whether a generic TOE card is even beneficial in an ESX environment. Some people swear by it, others do not.

I think that to use a generic TOE card, the iSCSI software stack would still need to be pretty hefty. By using the HW iSCSI TOE cards, the stack does get pushed to the hardware and that is the nice feature of these cards.

Best regards,

Edward