[SLL] Rant: ATA-over-Ethernet 0x88a2

[Andrew Sweger]

On Thu, 5 May 2005, David J. Pfaltzgraff wrote:

> Considering that there seems to be support in the kernel to be able to
> drive AoE, has anyone considered a module that provides the matching
> (or inverse) capability? ...

I got this far and feared you were going to say Ethernet-over-ATA.

> ... For example, with this inverse function, I could take an old
> system that has four ATA (old IDE?) interfaces and an ethernet
> interface and provide AoE storage.

I've just started browsing the very short AoE protocol. Your idea looks
very doable. I'm not sure how you get a box to route Ethernet frames (with
type 0x88A2) to a userland process. But assuming that was done, it looks
like making a process that responds to commands and uses a simple file as
a "disk" wouldn't be too difficult.

But for a higher level version of your idea, check out Brad Fitzpatrick's
MogileFS. It would be much more reliable and can coexist in a network
environment with other applications (whereas AoE would probably prefer its
own private segment).

  http://danga.com/mogilefs/

-- 
Andrew B. Sweger -- The great thing about multitasking is that several
                                things can go wrong at once.