I hate to say it, because iSCSI is cool as hell and 'just works', but you're better off just using NFS if you can get a license... It ain't cheap tho. And FWIW, iSCSI could be faster than NFS, NFS is likely just as fast as iSCSI or faster in some cases.
Utilizing the lun create -b (as in your example below), re-mounting that newly exposed iSCSI LUN as a new device on LINUX then performing the backup is definitely the right idea. This is the 'norm' for most NetApp iSCSI environments (Exchange, SQL, etc).
Glenn
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From: owner-toasters@mathworks.com [mailto:owner-toasters@mathworks.com] On Behalf Of David L. Lambert Sent: Wednesday, November 12, 2008 4:29 PM To: toasters@mathworks.com Subject: RE: Mounting read-only snapshots using open-iscsi?
I got mounting a snapshot to work. I needed to do "iscsiadm ... --rescan", following this hint:
http://www.mail-archive.com/open-iscsi@googlegroups.com/msg01072.html
We have not implemented this with an actual NetApp yet, so I have no idea whether performance will be acceptable; but thanks to all for the advice.
--
David Lee Lambert
Software Developer, Precision Motor Transport Group, LLC
517-349-3011 x223 (work) ... 586-873-8813 (cell)
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From: owner-toasters@mathworks.com [mailto:owner-toasters@mathworks.com] On Behalf Of David L. Lambert Sent: Wednesday, November 12, 2008 11:22 AM To: toasters@mathworks.com Subject: RE: Mounting read-only snapshots using open-iscsi?
[...]
However, as I said, we don't have an NFS license; we've also heard that NFS performance is poorer than iSCSI performance. My guess is that some commands like the following ought to work:
Filer> lun map /vol/vol1/luns/lun11_snapforback linux-host 3
Linux> iscsiadm -m discovery --interface eth0 -t st -p 10.10.10.23 --login
Linux> iscsiadm -m node --interface eth0 -p 10.10.10.23 --login
Linux> mount /dev/sde /mnt/lun11-snap
When I do that, though, the set of available SCSI disk devices on the Linux host doesn't change. Perhaps this is an open-iscsi limitation instead?