Eric - For the VMs that would run on that box, I can use straight files for the "local" disks of the VMs, but iSCSI will give me some flexibility in moving the VMs elsewhere if the overhead isn't too bad. For shared storage, I can use samba on FreeBSD directly, samba via a Linux VM or file sharing on a Windows VM. So the answer is that I need both, but could probably get away without iSCSI if it's non-performant or a pain. Likewise, one of the other posters' question makes me wonder if I'd be better off using the file sharing built into a Win VM. (Yes, there's some overhead dragging the data in & out of a VM but if the VM is running directly on the NAS box then I shouldn't be network limited & should have plenty of spare CPU cycles. Even if the VM was non-local to the NAS, the other posters' question makes me wonder about samba's performance/ overhead. ) Bottom line: there will be some shared storage from the NAS (of course), but one question is what is the best tool to do the sharing with. (Much as I'd like, I need SMB and can't just use NFS. ) Thomas On Jul 27, 2012, at 12:11 PM, Eric Crist <ecrist at secure-computing.net> wrote: > I think it's best, first, to figure out of you need shared storage, or a high-performance disk array. Once you answer that, you can figure out whether you need SMB/CIFS/NFS or iSCSI. They are very different animals. > > ----- > Eric F Crist > > > > On Jul 27, 2012, at 11:32:39, Thomas Lunde <tlunde at gmail.com> wrote: > >> Two things: >> >> 1. I found this to be a useful starting point for learning about SMB3 : >> >> http://blog.fosketts.net/2012/05/07/support-smb-30-features-support/ >> >> The success of Super Mario Brothers, version 3, makes learning-by-Google a bit difficult for this subject. >> >> >> >> 2. I'm also very interested in iSCSI vs. samba as I'm about to set up a dedicated ZFS on FreeBSD box as an appliance and am thinking of how to share that NAS to Linux boxen & Windows VMs. >> >> (I'd prefer to use Linux, but btrfs doesn't seem quite ready for prime time & ZFS on Linux is hobbled by licensing problems. With 2T drives, the probability of in-flight corruption and long rebuild times on RAID-5 are pushing me to raidz2 for a 6-8 drive array. ) >> >> Thomas >> >> >> >> >> >> On Jul 27, 2012, at 11:11 AM, Brian <goeko at Goecke-Dolan.com> wrote: >> >>> This months PenguinsUnbound.com meeting will be >>> Saturday July 28th at TIES, >>> 1667 Snelling Ave. N., St. Paul, MN 55108 >>> from 10:00am to 12:00pm >>> (See the web site http://www.penguinsunbound.com for directions and more >>> info.) >>> >>> *** Note, change in meeting room. We will be meeting in the Grand Hall over the garage. You will need to go in the usual door (Under the sky way on the west side of the building, and the take the stairs or elevator to the second floor and then go through the walk way over above the parking garage. *** >>> >>> >>> Samba/CIFS preseented by Christopher R. Hertel >>> >>> Samba is twenty years old. You'd think we'd all have given up and >>> gone home by now, but here we are still slogging away. In those 20 years, Samba has matured from a rebel upstart to an accepted standard implementation to a forgotten piece of infrastructure. >>> >>> More recently, a lot of fancy new network filesystems have popped up. >>> Things like Gluster and Ceph and "cloud storage" in general promise to solve big data storage problems, access issues, and world hunger all in one go. How will a vintage protocol like SMB/CIFS keep up? >>> >>> Is Samba even relevant any more? >>> >>> Well, yes. Yes, it is. >>> >>> This talk will gloss over the following topics in general terms vague enough >>> that even the layman will want to ask obtuse questions: >>> * Microsoft's latest SMB version: SMB3 >>> * Samba/CTDB clustering and other weird things Samba can mostly do now >>> * Whither POSIX semantics and NFSv4+ >>> * How a Samba geek wound up with a two year contract from Microsoft >>> >>> Chris Hertel is a long-haul member of the Samba Team (14+ years) who >>> actually lives in Saint Paul. He is author of the book "Implementing CIFS" and (surprisingly) lead author of Microsoft's official SMB/CIFS protocol specifications. He currently does stuff for Red Hat. >>> >>> I hope to see you there! >>> >>> ==>brian. >>> >>> *** STREAMING *** >>> If you can't make it you can use this url to stream the meeting. >>> mms://rss2000.video.ties2.net:1800 >>> >>> You should be able to connect with either: >>> mplayer mms://rss2000.video.ties2.net:1800 >>> or >>> vlc http://rss2000.video.ties2.net:1800 >>> _______________________________________________ >>> TCLUG Mailing List - Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minnesota >>> tclug-list at mn-linux.org >>> http://mailman.mn-linux.org/mailman/listinfo/tclug-list >> _______________________________________________ >> TCLUG Mailing List - Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minnesota >> tclug-list at mn-linux.org >> http://mailman.mn-linux.org/mailman/listinfo/tclug-list > > _______________________________________________ > TCLUG Mailing List - Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minnesota > tclug-list at mn-linux.org > http://mailman.mn-linux.org/mailman/listinfo/tclug-list