Storage Developer Conference

Zoned Namespaces represent the first step towards the standardization of Open-Channel SSD concepts in NVMe. Specifically, ZNS brings the ability to implement data placement policies in the host, thus providing a mechanism to lower the write-amplification factor (WAF), (ii) lower NAND over-provisioning, and (iii) tighten tail latencies. Initial ZNS architectures envisioned large zones targeting archival use cases. This motivated the creation of the "Append Command” - a specialization of nameless writes that allows to increase the device I/O queue depth over the initial limitation imposed by the zone write pointer. While this is an elegant solution, backed by academic research, the changes required on file systems and applications is making adoption more difficult. As an alternative, we have proposed exposing a per-zone random write window that allows out-of-order writes around the existing write pointer. This solution brings two benefits over the “Append Command”: First, it allows I/Os to arrive out-of-order without any host software changes. Second, it allows in-place updates within the window, which enables existing log-structured file systems and applications to retain their metadata model without incurring a WAF penalty. In this talk, we will cover in detail the concept of the random write window, the use cases it addresses, and the changes we have done in the Linux stack to support it.

Learning Objectives: Learn about general ZNS architecture and ecosystem,Learn about the use cases supported in ZNS and the design decisions in the current specification with regards to in-place updates and multiple inflight I/Os,Learn about new features being brought to NVMe to support in-place updates and transparent hight queue depths.

The Software-Enabled Flash API gives unprecedented control to application architects and developers to redefine the way they use flash for their hyperscale applications, by fundamentally redefining the relationship between the host and solid-state storage. Dive deep into new Software-Enabled Flash concepts such as virtual devices, Quality of Service (QoS) domains, Weighted Fair Queueing (WFQ), Nameless Writes and Copies, and controller offload mechanisms. This talk by KIOXIA (formerly Toshiba Memory) will include real-world examples using the new API to define QoS and latency guarantees, workload isolation, minimize write amplification by application-driven data placement, and achieve higher performance with customized flash translation layers (FTL).

Learning Objectives: Provide an in-depth dive into using the Software Enabled Flash API,Map application workloads to Software Enabled Flash structures,Understand how to implement QoS requirements using the API.

The NVM Express workgroup is introducing new features frequently, and the Linux kernel supporting these devices evolves with it. These ever moving targets create challenges when developing tools when new interfaces are created, or older ones change. This talk will provide information on some of these recent features and enhancements, and introduce the open source 'libnvme' project which implements an open source library available in public git repositories that provides access to all NVM Express features with convenient abstractions to the kernel interfaces interacting with your devices. The session will demonstrate integrating the library with other programs, and also provide an opportunity for the audience to share what additional features they would like to see out of this common library in the future.

Learning Objectives: Explain protocol and host operating system interaction complexities,Introduce libnvme and how it manages those relationships,Demonstrate integration with applications.

The efficiency, performance and choice in NVMe-oF is enabling some very unique and interesting use cases – from AI/ML to Hyperconverged Infrastructures. Artificial Intelligence workloads process massive amounts of data from structured and from unstructured sources. Today most deep learning architectures rely on local NVMe to serve up tagged and untagged datasets into map-reduce systems and neural networks for correlation. NVMe-oF for Deep Learning infrastructures enables a shared data model to ML/DL pipelines without sacrificing overall performance and training times. NVMe-oF is also enabling HCI deployment to scale without adding more compute, enabling end customers to reduce dark flash and reduce cost. The talk explores these and several innovative technologies driving the next storage connectivity revolution.

Learning Objectives: Storage architectures for Deep Learning Workloads,Extending the reach of HCI platforms using NVMe-oF,Ethernet Bunch of Flash architectures.

NVMe is the fastest growing storage technology of the last decade and has succeeded in unifying client, hyperscale and enterprise applications into a common storage framework. NVMe has evolved from a being a disruptive technology to becoming a core element in storage architectures. In this session, we will talk about the NVMe transition to a merged base specification inclusive of both NVMe and NVMe-oF architectures. We will provide an overview of the latest NVMe technologies, summarize the NVMe standards roadmap and describe the latest NVMe standardization initiatives. NVMe technology will present a number of areas of innovation that preserve our simple, fast, scalable paradigm while extending the broad appeal of NVMe architecture. These continued innovations will ready the NVMe technology ecosystem for yet another period of growth and expansion.

Learning Objectives: Learn about the NVMe transition to a merged base specification inclusive of both NVMe and NVMe-oF architectures. Receive a summary of the NVMe standards roadmap,Understand the latest NVMe standardization initiatives.

With PMEM boasting a much higher density and DRAM-like performance, applying it to in-memory caching such as memcached seems like an obvious thing to try. Nonetheless, there are questions when it comes to new technology. Would it work for our use cases, in our environment? How much effort does it take to find out if it works? How do we capture the most value with reasonable investment of resource? How can we continue to find a path forward as we make discoveries? At Twitter, we took an iterative approach to explore cache on PMEM. With significant early help from Intel, we started with simple tests in memory mode in a lab environment, and moved on to app_direct mode with modifications to Pelikan (pelikan.io), a modular open-source cache backend developed by Twitter. With positive results from the lab runs, we moved the evaluation to platforms that more closely represent Twitter’s production environment, and uncovered interesting differences. With better understanding of how Twitter’s cache workload behaves on the new hardware, and our insight into Twitter’s cache workload in general, we are proposing a new cache storage design called Segcache that, among other things, offers flexibility with storage media and in particular is designed with PMEM in mind. As a result, it achieves superior performance and effectiveness when running either on DRAM or PMEM. The whole exploration was made easier by the modular architecture of Pelikan, and we added a benchmark framework to support the evaluation of storage modules in isolation, which also greatly facilitated our exploration and development.

Learning Objectives: Demonstrate the feasibility of using PMEM for caching and meeting production requirements. Provide a case study on how software companies can approach and adopt new technology like PMEM iteratively. Provide observations and suggestions on how to promote a more integral hardware/software design cycle.

Software-based memory-to-memory data movement is common, but takes valuable cycles away from application performance. At the same time, offload DMA engines are vendor-specific and may lack capabilities around virtualization and user-space access. This talk will focus on how SDXI(Smart Data Acceleration Interface), a newly formed SNIA TWG is working to bring an extensible, virtualizable, forward-compatible, memory to memory data movement and acceleration interface specification. As new memory technologies get adopted and memory fabrics expand the use of tiered memory, data mover acceleration and its uses will increase. This TWG will encourage adoption and extensions to this data mover interface.

Learning Objectives: A new proposed standard for a memory to memory data movement interface,A new TWG to develop this standard,Usecases where this will apply to evolving storage architecture with memory pooling and persistent memory

Since the advent of the Smart Phone over a decade ago, we've seen several new "Smart" technologies, but few have had a significant impact on the data center until now. SmartNICs and SmartSSDs will change the landscape of the data center, but what comes next? This talk will summarize the state of the SmartNIC market by classifying and discussing the technologies behind the leading products in the space. Then it will dive into the emerging technology of SmartSSDs and how they will change the face of storage and solutions. Finally, we'll dive headfirst into the impact of PCIe 5 and Compute Express Link (CXL) on the future of Smart Acceleration on solution delivery.

Learning Objectives: Understand the current state of the SmartNIC market & leading products.,Introduce the concept of SmartSSDs and two products available today.,Discuss the future of Device to Device (D2D) communications using PCIe, CXL/CCIX.,Lay out a vision for where composable solutions leveraging multiple devices on a PCIe buss communicating directly.

The ZFS L2ARC is now more than 10 years old. Over that time, a lot of secret incantations and tribal knowledge have been created by users, testers, developers, and the odd sales or marketing person. That collection of community wisdom informs the use and/or tuning of ZFS L2ARC for certain IO profiles, dataset sizes, server class, share protocols, and device types.

In this talk, we will review a case study in which we tested a few of these L2ARC myths on an NVMe-capable OpenZFS storage appliance. Can high-speed NVMe flash devices keep L2ARC relevant in the face of ever-increasing memory capacity for ARC (primary cache) and all-flash storage pools?

Learning Objectives: 1) Overview of ZFS L2ARC design goals and high level implementation details that pertain to our findings; 2) Performance characteristics of L2ARC during warming and when warmed, plus any tradeoffs or pitfalls with L2ARC in these states; 3) How to leverage NVMe as L2ARC devices to improve performance in a few storage use cases.

5G Wireless technology will bring vastly superior data rates to the edge of the network. However, with this increase in bandwidth will come applications that significantly increase overall network throughput. Video applications will likely explode as end users have large amounts of data bandwidth to operate. Video will not only require advanced compression but will require large amounts of data storage. Combining advanced compression technologies with storage will allow a high density of storage and compression in a small amount of rack space with little power, ideal for placement at the edge of the network. NVMe based module provides the opportunity to use computational storage elements to enable edge compute and video compression.

This presentation will provide technical details and various options to combine video and storage on an NVMe interface. Further, it will explore how this NVMe device can be virtualized for both storage and video in an edge compute environment.

Learning Objectives: 1) Understand how NVMe can be used for both video and storage; 2) Understand how computational storage can be virtualized using NVMe; 3) Understand why combinational element modules such as Video Storage will become important after deployment of 5G networks.