iSCSI acceleration questions

[chuckk281]

Ehab had some questions regarding iSCSI acceleration and BladeSystem.

****************************************************************************************************************

Sorry all, but I am little bit confused,

In the quick specs of BL460c G6 it says that ‘the iSCSI offload feature of the embedded multifunction adapter requires the HP Accelerated iSCSI Pack’, although according to my information multifunction cards does not need anything, and they support TOE, am I right?  Anyone can shed some light here, I will be glad.

**********************************************************************************************************************

Arnaud chimed in:

***********************************************************************************************************

Yes you need the AiP license (1 per port) for using Accelerated iSCSI on the embedded LOMs like the BL460c G6’s NC532i. TOE is included standard. TOE is not the same functionality. On the opposite, you don’t need the AiP for optional mezz cards (NC532m, NC382m…) because it is already included.

A little summary:

-       TOE accelerate some basic TCP functions, so it is useful for all kind of Ethernet traffic including iSCSI storage). As far as I know TOE is still for Windows only. It uses a functionally called “TCP Chimney” which is included in Windows Server.

-       Accelerated iSCSI is offloading the iSCSI protocol execution from the main CPU(s) of the server to the NIC, so it is only useful for network storage. This is useful because iSCSI can be very CPU-consuming.

Hope this helps,

******************************************************************************************************

Are you using the Accelerated iSCSI Pack? Does it do good things for you?