[Openib-windows] File transfer performance options

[Fabian Tillier]

Hi Paul,

On 9/6/06, Paul Baxter <paul.baxter at dsl.pipex.com> wrote:
>
> We'd certainly consider SDP (or verbs ) if we end up having to write an
> explicit message passing application for the Linux side of our application,
> but at present we were trying to write a windows app that directly looked at
> a network mounted disk. An application was NOT required to run on the Linux
> side to 'serve' data.
>
> SRP might be the right answer long term but its still not clear to me if SRP
> is designed to work cross-platform across possibly different IB stacks. Are
> SRP implementations expected to be cross-compatible?

SRP is a wire protocol and is most certainly designed to work accross
different IB stacks and cross-platform.  There is no OS-specific stuff
in the wire protocol, so a SRP-compliant initiator driver should work
with an SRP-compliant target.  There can be issues depending on which
version of the SRP spec is implemented, but those are bugs IMO and
should be fixed.

> I ask because Mellanox SRP on Windows talks of only being supported with
> particular SRP targets but with a Linux openIB SRP target not yet supported.

The SRP targets listed as supported have been tested to work properly.
 It is certainly not an exclusive list, just a reflection of what has
been tested.

Anyhow, using SRP will likely require a cluster file system of some
sort if you plan on having multiple hosts share the target.  This adds
another dimension as cluster file systems can depend on specific HBA
functionality which may or may not exist in various SRP target
implementations.

Hopefully that helps somewhat.

- Fab