ATA over Ethernet

There is now a kernel module (aoe), tools (aoetools) and server software (vblade) whoch allows any one to set up an ATA over Ethernet storage network... and it is very to do in Ubuntu (currently Dapper 6.06 LTS).

Required packages

On the Ubuntu host that you wish to be the disk server:

• (server)# apt-get install vblade

On the Ubuntu host that you wish to mount the disk on:

• (client)# apt-get install aoe-tools

On the server:

• (server)# dd if=/dev/zero of=vblade0 count=1 bs=1M (server)# vblade 1 1 eth0 vblade0 ioctl returned 0 1048576 bytes pid 25000: e1.1, 2048 sectors

On the client:

• (client)# sys_dir=/sys aoe-stat
  • e1.1 0.001GB eth0 up

Using AoE

Insert the module into the linux kernel.

• (client)# modprobe aoe

This can automatically be performed at startup, by entering a line into the /etc/modules file.

The device and directory automatially get created when the aoe module is inserted into the kernel.

• (client)# aoe-interfaces eth0 (client)# aoe-discover

The block device is then located in /dev/etherd/e1.1 and can be treated like any other block device.

Create a filesystem:

• (client)# mke2fs /dev/etherd/e1.1

Create a mount point and mount the file system:

• (client)# mkdir /var/tmp/mnt (client)# mount /dev/etherd/e1.1 /var/tmp/mnt

This can be made to automatically mount on reboot, by entering a configuration line in /etc/fstab (untested).

References