Storage Developer Conference

Anyone managing a mass storage infrastructure for HPC, Big Data, Cloud, research, etc., is painfully aware that the growth, access requirements and retention needs for data are relentless. At the heart of that problem is the need to rationalize the way that data is managed, and create online access to all that data without maintaining it in a continuous, power-consuming state. The solution lies in creating an active archive that enables straight-from-the-desktop access to data stored at any tier for rapid data access via existing file systems that expand over flash, disk and tape library storage technologies. Active archives provide organizations with a persistent view of the data and make it easier to access files whenever needed, regardless of the storage medium being utilized.

Learning Objectives: 1) Understand how active archive technologies work and how companies are using them to enable reliable, online and efficient access to archived data; 2) Learn the implications of data longevity and planning considerations for long-term retention and data integrity assurance; 3) Learn why active archive solutions can achieve unmatched efficiency and cost savings as data continues to grow much faster than storage budgets.

One of the major barriers to adoption of persistent memory is preparing applications to make use of it's direct access capabilities. This presentation discusses a new user space file system for persistent memory and how it breaks these barriers. The presentation introduces the key elements to consider for a user space persistent memory file system and discuss the internals of this new file system. The discussion concludes with a presentation of current status and performance of this new persistent memory file system.

Learning Objectives: 1) Discussion of current barriers to persistent memory adoption; 2) Introduce how this new file system breaks down the barriers to adoption of persistent memory; 3) Introduce the SW internals of the this file system; 4) Present performance statistics and discussion of why this file system out-performs conventional, kernel based file systems.

This presentation reviews how classic storage architectures create barriers to throughput and scaleability for several of today's hot applications. Case studies and benchmarks are used to illustrate how a very high performance, NVMe networked storage solution allows these applications to break through these barriers.

Learning Objectives: 1) Understand how storage can limit scale out application performance; 2) Understand how new scale out apps apply different tiers of storage; 3) Understand barriers to application scale out; 4) Understand barriers to application throughput; 5) Understand how networked NVMe storage can dramatically improve app performance and scalability.

With many SMB3 servers in the industry, some with optional extensions, getting optimal configuration, and POSIX compliance can be confusing.

The Linux kernel client continues to improve with new performance and security features, and implementation of SMB3.1.1. This presentation will discuss recent enhancements to the Linux kernel client, as well as extensions to provide improved Apple (AAPL) interoperability and new POSIX extensions for Linux/Samba (see Jeremy Allison's presentation) and improved POSIX emulation to other servers.

New copy offload features will be demonstrated, as well as the current state of POSIX compatibility to different server types. Finally, a discussion of new protocol features under development in the Linux kernel client will be discussed.

Learning Objectives: 1) How POSIX compliant is access from Linux to SMB3 servers?; 2) How can I best configure access depending on server type: Windows or Mac or Samba or other NAS?; 3) What is the status of the Linux kernel client? What new features are available?; 4) How can I get optimal performance out of the Linux kernel client; 5) What are the advantages to using SMB3 for Linux?

Significant advances in throughput and latency for non-volatile media and networking require scalable and efficient software to capitalize on these advancements. This session will present an overview of the Storage Performance Development Kit, an open source software project dedicated to providing building blocks for scalable and efficient storage applications with breakthrough performance. There will be a focus on the motivations behind SPDK's userspace, polled-mode model, as well as details on the SPDK NVMe, CB-DMA, NVMe over Fabrics and iSCSI building blocks. http://spdk.io.

Learning Objectives: 1) Why use userspace drivers; 2) When polling is better than interrupts; 3) Applying shared-nothing architecture to storage.

Linux is usually at the edge of implementing new storage standards, and NVMe over Fabrics is no different in this regard. This presentation gives an overview of the Linux NVMe over Fabrics implementation on the host and target sides, highlighting how it influenced the design of the protocol by early prototyping feedback. It also tells how the lessons learned during developing the NVMe over Fabrics, and how they helped reshaping parts of the Linux kernel to support over Fabrics and other storage protocols better

NVM Express is predominately a block based protocol where data is transferred to/from host memory using DMA engines inside the PCIe SSD. However since NVMe 1.2 there exists a memory access method called a Controller Memory Buffer which can be thought of as a PCIe BAR managed by the NVMe driver. Also, the NVMe over Fabrics standard was released this year that extended NVMe over RDMA transports. In this paper we look at the performance of the CMB access methodology over RDMA networks. We discuss the implications of adding persistence semantics to both RDMA and these NVMe CMBs to enable a new type of NVDIMM (which we refer to as an NVRAM). These NVRAMs can reside on the IO sub-system and hence are decoupled from the CPU and memory sub-system which has certain advantages and disadvantages over NVDIMM which we outline in the paper. We conclude with a discussion on how NVMe over Fabrics might evolve to support this access methodology and how the RDMA standard is also developing to align with this work.

Learning Objectives: 1) NVM Express overview; 2) NVMe over Fabrics overview; 3) Using IO memory as an alternative to NVDIMM; 4) Controller Memory Buffers in NVMe; 5) Performance results for new access method.

SMB3 is the default Windows and MacOS X file sharing protocol, but what about making it the default on Linux ? After developing the UNIX extensions to the SMB1 protocol, the Samba developers are planning to add UNIX extensions to SMB3 also. Co-creator of Samba Jeremy Allison will discuss the technical challenges faced in making SMB3 into a seamless file sharing protocol between Linux clients and Samba servers, and how Samba plans to address them. Come learn how Samba plans to make NFS obsolete (again :-) !

Learning Objectives: 1) SMB3; 2) Linux; 3) Windows interoperability.

A discussion of the Hyper-V Storage Quality of Service protocol (MS-SQOS) and updates to networked storage requirements for Windows Server 2016 virtual machine hosts. This session is targeted at engineers and product managers of providers of networked storage to Hyper-V hosts and anyone else interested in how Hyper-V hosts utilize storage. Those attending this session should be able to gain familiarity with customer scenarios around storage quality of service, should be able to describe the purpose and scope of the MS-SQOS protocol, and should understand how Windows Server 2016 made changes to how it uses networked storage.

Learning Objectives: 1) Describe the purpose and scope of the MS-SQOS protocol; 2) Become aware of customer scenarios around storage quality of service; 3) Enumerate updates in how Hyper-V hosts use networked storage in Windows Server 2016.

Traditional disk based storage arrays commonly use various forms of RAID for failure protection and/or performance improvement. Modern distributed storage systems are built as shared nothing architectures using commodity hardware components and have different failure characteristics.

RAID has changed very little ever since its introduction three decades ago. There are several new and powerful constructions of erasure codes in the recent past (post- 2007) that were handcrafted to meet the needs of modern storage architectures. Several notable ones are fountain codes, locally repairable codes (LRC) and regenerating codes. However, these codes have made very little impact in the industry, because of the highly resistant nature of the storage vendors to investigate this space.

The subject of erasure codes is core to storage technologies, but is sadly ignored by most storage conventions. One of the reasons could be the complexity involved in understanding the space.

This talk will provide a non-mathematical, non-marketing, no-nonsense spin to the space of modern erasure codes. By the end of this talk, the audience will be able to pick specific categories from a bouquet of erasure codes that best suit a given storage system design.

Learning Objectives: 1) History and classification of erasure codes; 2) Technical deep-dive into modern erasure codes; 3) Storage system parameters’ trade-off; 4) Storage system design & suitable codes; 5) Who is doing what in this space.