Re: Scheduled Transfer Protocol on Linux

Zachary Amsden (zamsden@cthulhu.engr.sgi.com)
Fri, 11 Feb 2000 13:21:26 -0800

> > One thing that I've dreamed about for a while is getting the disk drive
> > vendors to put STP down in the drives. Then we throw out the SCSI/IDE
> > cables and use RJ45 connectors to talk to both the network and the disks.
> > Think hot plug. Cool, no?
>
> RJ45 - for GigE ? Is that really going to be cost effective ?

Not likely for individual disks, but it makes sense if you are talking about a
RAID array, or some other high capacity vault.

Just imagine the damage caused when an accidental (or intentional) flood of
traffic saturates your LAN though. These types of uses will need well
isolated networks, but make sense for shared filesystems. Unfortunately, they
also need lots of software support to provide synchronization between hosts.
This almost necessitates some minimal OS running on the disk vaults, unless
you want to implement a modified MESI protocol or resource sharing over the
wire.

-- 
Zachary Amsden  zamsden@engr.sgi.com  (650) 933-6919  09U-510  Core Protocols






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