Storage Developer Conference

Microsoft Azure has provided REST endpoints for blobs, tables, and queues since its inception. This is an efficient and simple stateless storage API for new applications. However, there is a very large installed base of mature applications, especially enterprise and vertical, which are written to a conventional file API such as Win32 or the C runtimes. Azure File Service provides [MS-SMB2] compliant file shares with the same high availability as Azure’s REST endpoints since the backing store for both transient handle state and files data is, under the hood, Azure tables and blobs. As a bonus, the file share namespace is also exposed via REST, allowing simultaneous and coherent access to file data from both endpoints. This talk will relate the experience and challenges of designing and implementing a wire compliant continuously available SMB server where the backing store is not even a conventional file system, let alone NTFS.

Learning Objectives:

1) Learn how an SMB sever can be built on top of something other than a conventional file system.

2) Gain an appreciation of the complexities involved in durably committing what is usually considered volatile handle state which must be both highly available and high performance.

3) Be inspired by the possibilities of immediately running existing applications unmodified against the cloud while simultaneously leveraging REST access to the application’s data.

A new class of ultra-low latency storage is emerging, including Persistent Memory (PM), as well as advanced nonvolatile storage technologies such as NVMe. The SNIA NVM TWG has been exploring these technologies and has more recently prepared a white paper for requirements of remotely utilizing such devices. Remote Direct Memory Access (RDMA), arbitrated by file and block storage protocols, is a clear choice for this access, but existing RDMA and storage protocol implementations incur latency overheads which impact the performance of the solution. And while raw fabric block protocols can address latency overheads, they do not address data integrity, management and sharing.

This talk explores the issues, and outlines a pathfinding effort to make small, natural extensions to RDMA and upper layer storage protocols to reduce these latencies to acceptable, minimal levels, while preserving the many advantages of the storage protocols they extend.

Learning Objectives: 1) Learn key technologies enabling remote access to new storage media, such as NVM and PM. 2) Understand the issues in making full use of PM technologies remotely, with today’s protocols. 3) Explore a path to fully access the benefits of remote access to PM devices in the future.

Network File Systems, needed for accessing everything from low end storage, to Windows and Mac servers, to high end NAS, continue to evolve. NFS and SMB, the two dominant network storage protocols, also continue to improve with exciting new features in their most recent dialects. And the Linux clients continue to improve their implementation of these protocols, recently adding security and performance enhancements for SMB3 and new pNFS layout types along with the NFSv4.2 support in the NFS client.

This presentation will discuss some of the recent changes in network file system support in Linux including enhanced CIFS/SMB2/SMB3 support in the kernel client, and also new developments in the NFS client. It will also discuss in progress work on new protocol features for improved performance, clustering scalability, reliability and availability. It will also compare and contrast some of the key features of the SMB3 and NFS Linux clients. Learning Objectives: 1)Understanding key features and limitations of the SMB3 support in Linux client, 2)Understanding key features and limitations of the NFS client in Linux client, 3)Understanding which protocol (and dialect) is better for common use cases, 4)Understanding key differences between NFSv4.2 and SMB3.1, 5)Understanding common SMB3 client configuration choices and why they are useful.

The Cloud Data Management Interface is designed to provide namespace-based management functionality for the superset of object, file and block protocols. This makes it ideally suited for use with common protocols such as NFS, CIFS, iSCSI, Swift and S3. This session provides an overview of how CDMI interoperates with these protocols, and how the use of CDMI as a management protocol adds value to multi-protocol systems. Concrete examples and use cases from end-users and vendors will be highlighted.

Learning Objectives: Learn how to use CDMI to manage object repositories. Learn how to use CDMI to manage file systems. Learn how to use CDMI to manage block storage systems. Learn how CDMI works with multi-protocol systems

The SMB3 ecosystem continues to grow with the introduction of new clients and server products, a growing deployment base, and new generations of networking technologies. This talk covers the changes to the SMB3 protocol in Windows 10 and Windows Server 2016, the design considerations, and how the changes will affect both protocol implementers and customers. The challenges and performance of 100Gb Ethernet and RDMA solutions on the next-generation Storage Spaces Direct (S2D) will be presented for the first time.

SMR is a gamechanger drive technology, embraced by all major manufacturers. SMR changes fundamental assumptions of filesystem management. This long-help abandonment of Random-Writes now makes drives behave as sequential-access tape.

Seagate is leading the way in providing a standards compliant IO stack for use with the new drives. Using the new ZAC/ZBC commands to make and maintain a filesystem is essential for performant operation. Seagate is sharing lessons learned from modifiying EXT4 for use with SMR. This effort is called the SMR Friendly File System (SMRFFS).

Learning objectives: 1) Forward-write only considerations for the block allocation scheme

,

2) Zones/BlockGroup/AllocationGroup alignment and use

, 3) Superblock, and other required write-in-place management schemes.

Slides are available in the show notes at www.snia.org/podcasts.

Shingled Magnetic Recording (SMR) is the next generation storage technology for continued improvement in HDD areal density, and offers new opportunities for open compute environments. In massive, scale-out cold storage applications such as active archive, social media and long-term data storage, SMR HDD-based solutions offers the highest density, lowest TCO and leading $/TB.

This speaking session will clearly articulate the difference in SMR drive architectures and performance characteristics, and will illustrate how the open source community has the distinct advantage of integrating a host-managed platform that leverages SMR HDDs. Further, HGST will discuss how SMR presents the possibility for unprecedented storage capacities, maintains a familiar form factor, and creates a lower-power envelope so architects can create responsive cold storage data pools that can be accessed in near real-time.

Learning objectives: Demonstrate how leveraging a SMR HDD provides advantages to a host-managed platform. Show how SMR is enabling cold storage data pools on disk, by vastly increasing the amount of archive data that can be actively accessed. Provide an insight into the future of SMR – what does this mean for next steps of the data center. Slides are available in the show notes at www.snia.org/podcasts.

A number of scale out storage solutions, as part of open source and other projects, are architected to scale out by incrementally adding and removing storage nodes. Example projects include:

• Hadoop’s HDFS

• CEPH

• Swift (OpenStack object storage)

The typical storage node architecture includes inexpensive enclosures with IP networking, CPU, Memory and Direct Attached Storage (DAS). While inexpensive to deploy, these solutions become harder to manage over time. Power and space requirements of Data Centers are difficult to meet with this type of solution. Object Drives further partition these object systems allowing storage to scale up and down by single drive increments.

This talk will discuss the current state and future prospects for object drives. Use cases and requirements will be examined and best practices will be described. Learn: What are object drives? What value do they provide? Where are they best deployed? Slides are available in the show notes at www.snia.org/podcasts.

Non-Volatile DIMMs, or NVDIMMs, have emerged as a go-to technology for boosting performance for next generation storage platforms. The standardization efforts around NVDIMMs have paved the way to simple, plug-n-play adoption. If you're a storage developer who hasn't yet realized the benefits of NVDIMMs in your products, then this session is for you! We will walk you through a soup-to-nuts description of integrating NVDIMMs into your system, from hardware to BIOS to application software. We'll highlight some of the "knobs" to turn to optimize use in your application as well as some of the "gotchas" encountered along the way. Learning Objectives: Understand what an NVDIMM is, Understand why an NVDIMM can improve your system performance, Understand how to integrate an NVDIMM into your system. Slides are available in the show notes at www.snia.org/podcasts.

Storage Intelligence allows Solid State Storage to work together with applications to provide enhanced performance and endurance of storage devices. Today standardization of initial features is nearly complete in the SCSI standard and is moving forward in the NVMe standard with SATA standardization close behind that. This presentation will describe the details that Storage Intelligence is standardizing today and bringing to the standardization process in the near future. Current work involves intelligent placement of data on the storage device, intelligent management of garbage collection, and management of the over provisioning space on the storage device. Future work will add In Storage Compute in the SNIA Object Drive TWG. Each of these four features will be described in detail. Learning Objectives: Define the features of Storage Intelligence. Define the state of standards development in SCSI, NVMe, and SATA. Why are additional controls over storage necessary. Slides are available in the show notes at www.snia.org/podcasts.