Vblade - ATA over Ethernet
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Contents
Background
ATA over Ethernet (AoE)[1] is a network protocol developed by the Brantley Coile Company (now Coraid)[2], designed for accessing ATA storage devices over Ethernet networks. It gives the possibility to build SANs with low-cost, standard technologies. AoE does not rely on network layers above Ethernet, such as IP, UDP, TCP, etc. This means that AoE is not routable over LANs and is intended for SANs only. An alternative to iSCSI, the AoE specification[3] [4] is 8 pages compared with iSCSI's[5] 257 pages.
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Installation
The Linkstation is used as a server running vblade. A separate computer is a client running aoetools. This version of vblade runs in userspace, however there is a version that runs in kernelspace.[6][7]
USB Drive |
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I bricked my LS when trying to mount an internal partition the first time I tried this, so I used a usb drive this time around. Which on my LinkStation was /dev/sda1 - Ramuk |
Server (vblade)
FreeLink
Use aptitude to install vblade componant of AOE[8]. You will need to have the unstable branch added: Get access to packages from the Debian unstable branch
apt-get install vblade
usage: vblade <shelf> <slot> <ethn> <device>
vblade 1 2 eth0 /dev/sda1 &
Client (aoetools)
Install the aoetools[9] package [10] using aptitude. You will need to have Unstable (Debian) or Testing (Debian) branch enabled.
My Client |
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In this case I have a PIII/600 Compaq Armada laptop running Ubuntu Dapper Drake. - Ramuk |
sudo apt-get aoetools mkdir mountpoint sudo modprobe aoe
check to see that your vblade device is available to mount
sudo aoe-stat
you should see output like this:
e1.2 20.003GB eth0 up
Mount this device on your client
sudo mount -t vfat /dev/etherd/e1.2 mountpoint/
and try it out, hopefully it works. There is some useful Linux support on the Coraid site[11]
References
- ↑ Wikipedia:ATA over Ethernet
- ↑ Coraid:: The Linux Storage People
- ↑ Advanced Technology Attachment(ATA) over Ethernet - (AoE)
- ↑ Coraid: The AoE Protocol
- ↑ RFC 3720 - Internet Small Computer Systems Interface - (iSCSI)
- ↑ Vblade Linux kernel module
- ↑ Sourceforge: Kvblade
- ↑ Sourceforge: Vblade
- ↑ Sourceforge: ATA Over Ethernet Tools - the server side part of AoE and this one runs in userspace
- ↑ Debian Package: aoetools - tools to assist in using ATA over Ethernet
- ↑ Linux Support for EtherDrive (R) Storage