Re: [9fans] plan9 on vmware esx

[erik quanstrom <quanstro@quanstro.net>]

> Run in fear.
>
> Despite having a number which is just a wee bit higher than the
> things supported by the existing Plan 9 NCR/LSI SCSI driver,
> this is an utterly different beast, based on LSI's "Fusion"
> architecture, which in theory simplifies things vastly for the
> host over the old sequencer/script architecture, but all of the
> simplification is balanced out by vast complexity additions in
> other areas (addressing devices in terms of target and LUN is
> obsolete, so there are two or three other ways that devices can
> identify themselves, and a host is supposed to set up a mapping
> from long identifiers to short ones for, and for some reason I
> didn't get on first reading the host is supposed to use the same
> mapping across reboots).

regardless of what one things of the fusion architecture,
most of these complications are direct results about how
modern scsi works; any modern scsi driver will have the
same issues.  the address of a scsi device will have depends
on the protocol used for disk access.  sas for example
uses "sas addresses" aka a wwn.  if you avoid dealing with
expanders, sas simplifies quite a bit.  sdorion (contrib
quanstro/sd) is a "combined mode" driver.  combined mode
means that it is able to talk to either sata or sas hardware.

- erik