Re: Pe: [PATCH v5 1/3] virtio-scsi: first version

[Dor Laor]

On 02/13/2012 02:40 PM, Nicholas A. Bellinger wrote:
> Hi Dor, James&  Co,
>
> On Mon, 2012-02-13 at 09:57 +0200, Dor Laor wrote:
> > On 02/13/2012 09:05 AM, Christian Borntraeger wrote:
> > > On 12/02/12 21:16, James Bottomley wrote:
> > > > Well, no-one's yet answered the question I had about why.
> > >
> > > Just to give one example from a different angle:
> > > In the big datacenters tape libraries are still very important, and lots
> > > of them have a scsi attachement. virtio-blk certainly is not the right
> > > way to handle those. Furthermore it seems even pretty hard to craft
> > > a virtio-tape since most of those libraries have vendor specific library
> > > controls (via sg). We would need to duplicate scsi generic (hint, hint :-)
> > >
> > > > virtio-scsi seems to be a basic duplication of virtio-blk except that it seems to
> > > > fix some problems virtio-blk has.  Namely queue parameter discover,
> > > > which virtio-blk doesn't seem to do.  There may also be a reason to cut
> > > > the stack lower down.  Error handling is most often cited for this, but
> > > > no-one's satisfactorily explaned why it's better to do error handling in
> > > > the guest instead of the host.
> > > >
> > > > Could someone please explain to me why you can't simply fix virtio-blk?
> > >
> > > I dont think that virtio-scsi will replace virtio-blk everywhere. For non-scsi
> > > block devices, image files or logical volumes virtio-blk seems to be the right
> > > approach, I think.
> >
> > +1
> >
> > virtio-scsi is superior w.r.t:
> >     - Device support: tapes, cdroms, other
>
> AFAICT any type of non TYPE_DISK struct scsi_device passthrough is going
> to currently require virtio-scsi in order to work.
>
> >     - Does guest-host mapped multipath
>
> The logic that comes with target_core_fabric_configfs.c and the native
> target control plane gives a host-side (tcm_vhost) fabric driver generic
> explict/implict ALUA multipath support by default.
>
> I think there are some interesting possibilities for paravirtualized
> ALUA multipath..  8-)
>
> >     - Supports plenty of virtual disks mapped to the guest w/o need for a
> >       pci slot per each virtio-blk
>
> Ouch, virtio-blk lacks multi-lun per pci slot support..?

Only if you use the pci multi-function option but that kills standard 
hot unplug

> >     - offload fancy/new/sophisticated scsi commands from the guest to the
> >       storage array w/o need for qemu implementation. Example XCOPY.
>
> ...
>
> > There are some more goodies like ability to support windows guest
> > clustering w/o hacky versions of scsi pass through over virtio-blk.
> > virtio-blk is also a candidate to change the request based towards bio
> > based implementation, so sticking to it does not buy us too much.
>
> MSFT cluster guests that require SPC-3 PR support can run today with
> tcm_loop LLD SCSI LUNs + SG_IO/BSG + right megasas QEMU HBA emulation,
> but I do agree this would be better served by virtio-scsi for guests
> that require SPC-3 PR support or passthrough.
>
> --nab
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
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