Ubuntu Manpage: aoe-sancheck - verify storage network capabilities

NAME

       aoe-sancheck - verify storage network capabilities

SYNOPSIS

       aoe-sancheck [-v]

DESCRIPTION

       The  aoe-sancheck  command collects information about the local interfaces and probes the network for ATA
       over Ethernet devices, validating the paths for each device. It does not use the aoe  kernel  module  but
       rather  the bpf interface to evaluate the network.  As such, the aoe module does not need to be loaded to
       perform the test.

       The output of the command is divided into two sections: information about the local  interfaces  followed
       by  a list of detected AoE devices.  The first section displays the local interfaces, if the interface is
       up or down, its configured MTU, and the PCI ID for the interface.

       The second section lists detected AoE devices, one per line, with the following information:

       Device The device name of the form eX.Y where X is the AoE device shelf address, and Y is the AoE  device
              slot address.

       Macs   The number of mac addresses detected for this device.

       Payload
              The  number  of  bytes of data the device can handle in a single AoE request. This number does not
              represent the total frame size as it does not include bytes from ethernet or AoE headers.

       Local Interfaces
              The list of local interfaces from which the device is visible.

   Options
       -v     Prints out additional raw information.

DIAGNOSIS

For each device, aoe-sancheck may print out additional lines of suggestions or warnings. The following
checks are made:

The MTU of the local interfaces is set high enough to handle the AoE device's reported payload.
Depending on the host NIC's capabilities and storage network switch's capabilities, best
performance may or may not be with local interface MTU set higher than a device's payload size.

The number of local interfaces matches the number of interfaces on the device.
Best performance comes from having a host and device with comparable bandwidth. Aoe-sancheck
simply counts the number of interfaces involved and does not figure link bandwidth in its
comparison.

All local interfaces for an AoE device have the same MTU.
If one interface for a device has a smaller MTU than the others, the AoE driver must use the
smaller payload size for all interfaces.

Each path to the device is capable of the configured payload size.
This check detects the situation where a local interface is configured for jumbo frames and the
AoE device is capable of jumbo frames, but some aspect of the network is incapable of passing
frames that size, for example, a misconfigured switch. Aoe-sancheck reports the maximum payload
size the path is capable of if less than the configured payload size.

BUGS

       The program may sometimes display inconsistent results between runs showing that a path is capable  of  a
       smaller  frame  size than it actually is.  If you see this behavior, please email one of the authors with
       your verbose output.

       The program probes only the first 32 ethernet interfaces found in the system.

AUTHORS