BALANCING AND FAIL OVER FOR GENERIC STORAGE AREA NETWORKS
Kelvin Ng · 2004
This paper presents the design of an algorithm to provide end-to end multichannel load balancing and failover for generic SANs. A virtual channel is formed by the aggregation of multiple sub channels. This provides scalability as sub-channels can be added or removed when required. Multiple sub-channels also improve the reliability of storage network. By exchanging information between 2 hosts, the algorithm is also able to balance both the transmission and reception load. Additional information can be added to transmitted packets by lowering the MTU value of a virtual network interface. This additional information can be used to identifY the network storage protocol used so as to provide end-to-end multichannel functionality independent of the network storage protocol used. Results have shown that the implementation is able to provide higher throughput with the added benefits of end-to-end load balancing and failover to both HyperSCSI and iSCSI.