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LinuxIO (LIO) is the standard open-source SCSI target in Linux. It supports all prevalent storage fabrics, including Fibre Channel (QLogic), FCoE, iEEE 1394, iSCSI, iSER (Mellanox InfiniBand), SRP (Mellanox InfiniBand), USB, vHost, etc.

The advanced feature set of LinuxIO has made it the SCSI target of choice for many storage array vendors, for instance allowing them to achieve VMware® Ready certifications. Native support for LIO in QEMU/KVM, libvirt, and OpenStack™ (setup, code) makes it an attractive storage option for cloud deployments.

LIO includes targetcli, a management shell and API with a single namespace for all storage objects.

LIO and targetcli are developed by Datera, Inc., a data storage systems and software company located in Mountain View in the Silicon Valley.

Frontend

Fabric Modules implement the protocols to transmit data over diverse fabrics, providing transport media independence.

• Fibre Channel - QLogic: released, Emulex: released
• Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE): released
• iEEE 1394: released
• IBM vSCSI for IBM System p: RC
• iSCSI (SCSI over IP) - software: released, Chelsio: released
• iSER (Mellanox InfiniBand): released
• Loopback SCSI virtualization: released
• NVMe-OF: In development
• SRP (Mellanox InfiniBand): released
• USB Gadget: released
• vHost with QEMU/KVM virtio and virtio-scsi PV guests: released

Backend

Backstores implement the methods to access data on devices, providing storage media independence.

• Backstores: SATA, SAS, SCSI, SSD, FLASH, DVD, USB, ramdisk, etc.
• Virtualization of storage media; transparent mapping of I/O to LUNs
• No hard limits on number of LUNs/target; maximum LUN size ¾PB

Architecture

The LinuxIO engine implements the generic SCSI semantics.

• High-performance, non-blocking, multithreaded architecture with SSE4.2 support
• CPU architectures: x86, ia64, Alpha, Cell, PPC, ARM, MIPS, etc.
• Distributions: CentOS, Debian, Fedora, openSUSE, RHEL, Scientific Linux, SLES, Ubuntu
• Platforms: PC architecture, Sony PS2/PS3, Raspberry Pi, Technologic TS-7800

Advanced SCSI feature set

• Persistent Reservations (PRs)
• Asymmetric Logical Unit Assignment (ALUA)
• Error Recovery Levels (ERL=0,1,2)
• Active/active task migration and session continuation (ERL=2)
• Protocol multiplexing, load-balancing and failover (MC/S)
• T10 Data Integrity Format (DIF)
• vStorage APIs for Array Integration (VAAI)

targetcli provides the fabric agnostic single-node management shell for LIO. targetcli aggregates and exports all LIO SAN functionality via the RTSlib library and API [HTML][PDF].

LIO works with Initiators of the following operating systems:

• Microsoft: Windows® Server 2008/R2/2012 and Windows® XP/Vista/7/8
• Apple Mac OS X (via third-party initiator)
• Linux: CentOS, Debian, Fedora, openSUSE, RHEL, Scientific Linux, SLES, Ubuntu
• Unix: Solaris 10, OpenSolaris, HP-UX
• VMs: vSphere™ 5, Red Hat KVM, Microsoft Hyper-V, Oracle xVM/VirtualBox, Xen

LIO enables VMware Ready certifications (incl. vSphere™ 5). It also passes the Microsoft Windows® Server 2008 / R2 Failover Cluster compatibility test suites.

LIO is designed from ground up to support highly available and cluster storage:

• Deeply embedded high availability (Network RAID1)
• Scale-out clusters and disaster recovery solutions

DIF | Fibre Channel | FCoE | InfiniBand | iSCSI | iSER | iSNS | iWARP | RoCE | SLP | SRP | targetcli | VAAI | vHost