The scsigen Log: Question to all storage admins, developers and QA engineers…
For the past couple of weeks I have been focusing my free time on continuing the development of scsigen v2.0. I am currently working on the Linux 2.6 version and it will be followed by Sun’s Solaris/OpenSolaris. Microsoft Windows and FreeBSD will come afterward.
From experience I have learned to always find out what the user wants or desires in features and functionality. I am not here to introduce a new industry but provide easy-to-use solutions that are contained in simple packages. Project details are listed in the link provided above.
Now, to all storage administrators, developers and QA engineers out there: What features are you looking for in storage management solution?
Not only will this solution be provided across multiple operating platforms and architectures, it will provide the admin with (locally or remotely from either a CLI or GUI) the following features/functionality (listing of some of the major ones):
- Generate a detailed listing of SCSI initiator and targets
- View/edit host-side initiator and target parameters
- Generate raw Command Descriptor Blocks (CDB)
- Choose from a set of predefined commands to send to selected device(s): such as TUR, Inquiry, Sync, etc.
- Rescan/update the SCSI Bus and add and remove device(s)
- View Vital Product Data (VPD), Log Sense Pages, SES/SAF-TE information, etc.
- View/modify Mode Pages
- View/modify Persistent Reservations
- Flash device(s)/SES firmware
- View host-side SCSI related kernel logs
- Utilize the SCSITrace Bus Analyzer Module for problem isolation (host installed SCSI protocol analyzer/viewer)
- Replay captured I/O traces for reproducibility
- Generate automated environments (for both SCSIGen and SCSITrace)
If you have any ideas or suggestions on what you may need in a storage management solution, please share and if it is possible to integrate it within the scsigen suite, then you will not need to look any further (or at least when the initial stable versions are released).
If you can do it, a text-based “tree” sort of thing that illustrates the relationship between the entities would be great. Something like:
disk (bus,target,lun) -> HBA (bus) -> major, minor -> sd device -> mpath device -> lvm pv
Gonna be tough to code, though…
Comment by jml — 19. January 2009 @ 07:08
Actually that is a great idea! Thanks for the suggestion. It wouldn’t be difficult to implement such a thing. I will have to take some time to research how I would like to integrate that into the current code, but again, it should not be a problem. Thanks again.
Comment by admin — 19. January 2009 @ 07:31