INTRODUCTION ------------ The vblade is the virtual EtherDrive (R) blade, a program that makes a seekable file available over an ethernet local area network (LAN) via the ATA over Ethernet (AoE) protocol. The seekable file is typically a block device like /dev/md0 but even regular files will work. When vblade exports the block storage over AoE it becomes a storage target. Another host on the same LAN can access the storage if it has a compatible aoe kernel driver. BUILDING -------- The following command should build the vblade program on a Linux-based system: make For FreeBSD systems, include an extra parameter like so: make PLATFORM=freebsd EXAMPLES -------- There is a "vbladed" script that daemonizes the program and sends its output to the logger program. Make sure you have logger installed if you would like to run vblade as a daemon with the vbladed script. ecashin@kokone vblade$ echo 'I have logger' | logger ecashin@kokone vblade$ tail -3 /var/log/messages Feb 8 14:52:49 kokone -- MARK -- Feb 8 15:12:49 kokone -- MARK -- Feb 8 15:19:56 kokone logger: I have logger Here is a short example showing how to export a block device with a vblade. (This is a loop device backed by a sparse file, but you could use any seekable file instead of /dev/loop7.) ecashin@kokone vblade$ make cc -Wall -c -o aoe.o aoe.c cc -Wall -c -o linux.o linux.c cc -Wall -c -o ata.o ata.c cc -o vblade aoe.o linux.o ata.o ecashin@kokone vblade$ su Password: root@kokone vblade# modprobe loop root@kokone vblade# dd if=/dev/zero bs=1k count=1 seek=`expr 1024 \* 4096` of=bd -file 1+0 records in 1+0 records out 1024 bytes transferred in 0.009901 seconds (103423 bytes/sec) root@kokone vblade# losetup /dev/loop7 bd-file root@kokone vblade# ./vblade 9 0 eth0 /dev/loop7 ioctl returned 0 4294968320 bytes pid 16967: e9.0, 8388610 sectors Here's how you can use the Linux aoe driver to access the storage from another host on the LAN. ecashin@kokone ecashin$ ssh makki Last login: Mon Feb 7 10:25:04 2005 ecashin@makki ~$ su Password: root@makki ecashin# modprobe aoe root@makki ecashin# aoe-stat e9.0 eth1 up root@makki ecashin# mkfs -t ext3 /dev/etherd/e9.0 mke2fs 1.35 (28-Feb-2004) ... Creating journal (8192 blocks): done Writing superblocks and filesystem accounting information: done This filesystem will be automatically checked every 24 mounts or 180 days, whichever comes first. Use tune2fs -c or -i to override. root@makki ecashin# mkdir /mnt/e9.0 root@makki ecashin# mount /dev/etherd/e9.0 /mnt/e9.0 root@makki ecashin# echo hooray > /mnt/e9.0/test.txt root@makki ecashin# cat /mnt/e9.0/test.txt hooray Remember: be as careful with these devices as you would with /dev/hda! Jumbo Frame Compatibility ------------------------- Vblade can use jumbo frames provided your initiator is jumbo frame capable. There is one small configuration gotcha to consider to avoid having the vblade kernel frequently drop frames. Vblade uses a raw socket to perform AoE. The linux kernel will only buffer a certain amount of data for a raw socket. For 2.6 kernels, this value is managed through /proc: root@nai aoe# grep . /proc/sys/net/core/rmem_* /proc/sys/net/core/rmem_default:128000 /proc/sys/net/core/rmem_max:128000 rmem_max is the max amount a user process may expand the receive buffer to -- through setsockopt(...) -- and rmem_default is, as you might expect, the default. The gotcha is that this amount to buffer does not relate to the amount of user data buffered, but the amount of real data buffered. As an example, the Intel GbE controller must be given 16KB frames to use an MTU over 8KB. For each received frame, the kernel must be able to buffer 16KB, even if the aoe frame is only 60 bytes in length. The linux aoe initiator will use 16 outstanding frames when used with vblade. A good default for ensuring frames are not dropped is to allocate 16KB for 17 frames: for f in /proc/sys/net/core/rmem_*; do echo $((17 * 16 * 1024)) >$f; done Be sure to start vblade after changing the buffering defaults as the buffer value is set when the socket is opened. AoE Initiator Compatibility --------------------------- The Linux aoe driver for the 2.6 kernel is compatible if you use aoe-2.6-7 or newer. You can use older aoe drivers but you will only be able to see one vblade per MAC address. Contrib Patches --------------- see contrib/README Kvblade ------- While vblade runs as a userland process (like "ls" or "vi"), there is another program that runs inside the kernel. It is called kvblade. It is alpha software.