ATA Over Ethernet (AoE)

Hi,

Has anyone looked into ATA Over Ethernet (AoE) for their system? I'm considering using it for a Music database.

Any advice as to pros or cons?

1) Configuring it (they say its easy, is it)
2) Actual Throughput MBytes/s (overhead of protocol)
3) Does it clog up the Ethernet network and make it unusable
4) Reliability (non-TCP/IP device)
5) Multiple AoE devices on the network
6) Relative speed at 1000 Mb/s vs IDE or SATA 1.5 or 3.0 internal drives
7) More than one AoE drive on a network
8) Overhead or drivers
9) Reliability of drivers
10) Anything I've missed?

I have a Windows XP Home, local network with only RIOs on it periodically for updating their databases. I plan on using it at the 100/1000 Mb/s rate and will throttle down to 10 Mb/s only for RIO updates. I will probably need the 1000Mb/s for Up/Down loading database files.

Anyone have recommendations for devices they might have used or are looking at using, what to stay away from, etc. My alternative is to just keep buying more 750 GB drives or make a server cabinet.

I may or may not consider using RAID for the drive(s).

Thanks,

Ross

AoE relies on striping your data across multiple spindles to get the speed back. A single AoE drive will perform significantly worse than a directly attached drive.

You'll want to get a dedicated switch or VLAN for it to run on as well since there is pretty much no security.

For Windows usage you'll need to get a third party driver.

One major consideration is that most systems out there are single-platform, vendor-unique.

Which leaves you entirely at the mercy of the short-lived company for driver updates etc, and unable to share files with some other devices on your network.

Also, AoE generally works only within a single LAN segment, which can make wireless access interesting..

EDIT: Something like a Linksys NSLU2 (or similar) is probably a better idea.
Cheers

Hi,

Okay, all very good points. The Forum wins again, I win too.

I just ordered another 4 each 750GB SATA Drives. I will just update my existing system.

Thanks for the great advice.

Ross

iSCSI would be a possible solution along the same lines. Linux implements an iSCSI host and Windows has iSCSI client software. I don't think the drives need to be SCSI to have them "shared out". This probably isn't much faster than AoE though, if at all. But iSCSI has better security and since it's supported on Linux no vendor problems.

I doubt that "security" is a real issue at all for AoE in this particular situation. It works only within a single LAN segment (eg. one hub/switch), so anything outside of that segment cannot see it.

Cheers