Storage Developer Conference

By now, you have a good understanding of SNIA Swordfish™ and how it extends the DMTF Redfish® specification to manage storage equipment and services. Attend this presentation to learn what’s new and how the specification has evolved since last year. The speaker will share the latest updates ranging from details of features and profiles to new vendor-requested functionality that’s supporting the specification from direct-attached to NVMe. You won’t want to miss this opportunity to be brought up-to-speed.

Learning Objectives: 1) Educate the audience on what’s new with Swordfish; 2) Describe features and profiles and why they are useful; 3) Provide an overview of vendor-requested Swordfish functionality.

DMTF's Redfish® is a standard API designed to deliver simple and secure management for converged, hybrid IT and the Software Defined Data Center (SDDC). Both human readable and machine capable, Redfish leverages common Internet and web services standards to expose information directly to the modern tool chain. This presentation will provide an overview of Redfish, what’s new in the Redfish ecosystem, as well as adoption in the broader standards community. You’ll also learn more about the general Redfish data model, including the base storage models and infrastructure that are used by SNIA Swordfish extensions.

Learning Objectives: 1) Introduce the DMTF Redfish API; 2) Provide an update on the latest Redfish developments; 3) Understand how SNIA Swordfish builds on Redfish.

The SNIA NVMP TWG continues to make significant progress on defining the architecture for interfacing applications to PM. In this talk, we will focus on the important Remote Persistent Memory scenario, and how the NVMP TWG’s programming model applies. Application use of these interfaces, along with fabric support such as RDMA and platform extensions, are part of this, and the talk will describe how the larger ecosystem fits together to support PM as low-latency remote storage.

Whether you are a storage vendor, consumer, or developer, the performance of storage solutions affects you. Assessing the performance of large and complex storage solutions requires some level of performance testing lab, and there are many factors to consider. From network topology to load generator CPU, all components must be selected and configured with care to avoid unintended bottlenecks.

In this session, we will review a few best practices and lessons learned, including: whether virtual clients are feasible and my experiences attempting performance testing on several different hypervisors, best practices for network configuration, and how to use maximum effective data rates to avoid unintended bottlenecks. Finally, we will conclude with a review of data comparing different physical load generating hardware and its effect on measured performance.

Learning Objectives: 1) Effect of load generating client hardware on measured performance; 2) Avoiding unintended bottlenecks by using interconnect maximum effective data rates; 3) Best practices for configuring a performance lab network and load generators.

SMB 3.1.1 is the state of the art for secure remote file access, but deploying it for clouds and mobile users can be very challenging; TCP/445 is often blocked, networks are often slow, and edge file servers are often feared. The Microsoft SMB3 team has now built the first implementation of SMB3 over QUIC, a UDP/TLS transport pioneered by Google. This allows secure tunneling of SMB3 over internet-friendly ports. Furthermore, we have added compression for SMB3, which allows significant data savings over congested and low bandwidth networks. In this talk we’ll discuss these new options, as well as other recent security and feature capabilities nearing completion.

Learning Objectives: 1) SMB3 over new transport; 2) SMB3 over wide area networks; 3) SMB3 protocol update.

Attendees of this presentation will learn how to use several open source tools ( https://github.com/jharriga/ ) to evaluate object storage platforms. These tools provide automation and customer-based object storage workloads for activities such as filling a cluster, aging a cluster and running steady-state mixed operation workloads. One of the tools, RGWtest, automates pool creation, logs cluster statistics such as system resource utilization (CPU and memory) and submits workloads through COSbench - Intel’s open source object storage benchmark tool.

A demonstration of the tools will be part of the presentation.

Learning Objectives: 1) How to install, configure and execute the object storage workload tools; 2) How to interpret workload run results; 3) How to design and size object storage workloads.

PowerShell is a task-based command-line shell and scripting language that helps rapidly automate tasks that manage operating systems (Linux, macOS, and Windows) and processes. PowerShell is open-source, object-based and includes a rich expression parser and a fully developed scripting language with a gentle learning curve. The PowerShell Toolkit for SNIA Swordfish™ provides simple to use commands for managing any Swordfish Implementation (including the SNIA API Emulator). Attend this session to learn how to use the SNIA Swordfish PowerShell Module to jumpstart development of your own Swordfish implementation.

Learning Objectives: 1) Provide an overview of the PowerShell open source tool kit; 2) Describe how the PowerShell tool kit can speed a Swordfish implementation; 3) Educate the audience on how to use and access the PowerShell tool kit.

After a year of implementation progress of the The SMB3 .1.1 POSIX Extensions, a set of protocol extensions to allow for optimal Linux and Unix interoperability with NAS and Cloud file servers

- what is the current status

- what have we learned

- what has changed in the protocol specification in the past year

- what advice do we have for implementers

- and users …

These extensions greatly improve the experience for users of Linux. This presentation will review the state of the protocol extensions and their current implementation in the Linux kernel and Samba among others, and provide an opportunity for feedback and suggestions for additions to the POSIX extensions.

This has been an exciting year with many improvements to the implementations of the SMB3.1.1 POSIX Extensions in Samba and Linux!

Learning Objectives: 1) What is the current status of Linux interoperability with various SMB3.1.1 servers?; 2) How have the protocol extensions for Linux/POSIX progressed over the past year? What has changed? What works?; 3) What are suggestions for implementors of SMB3.1.1 servers?; 4) What is useful information for users to know to try these extensions?; 5) How do new Linux file system features map to these extensions?

NVMe KV (Key-Value) is an industry-wide proposal for a new command structure that allows access to data on an NVMe SSD controller using a “key” rather than a block address. Developed within the NVM Express technical working group, this Key Value command set provides a “key” to store a corresponding “value” on non-volatile media, then retrieves that “value” from the media by specifying the corresponding “key.” In addition to extensive work being undertaken by the NVM Express working group, the SNIA has completed an overarching KeyValue API released for a membership vote in January 2019. This presentation examines standardization efforts going on within SNIA and the NVM Express working group that will allow users to access key-value data without the costly and time-consuming overhead of additional translation tables between keys and logical blocks.

Learning Objectives: 1) What is the status of standards development; 2) Overview of what is in the SNIA KV API; 3) Overview of what is in the NVMe KV proposal.

A variety of persistent memory technologies with DRAM-class performance, known as “memory class storage” or “MCS”, have appeared on the horizon. MCS will change the architecture of future computing systems. These technologies include carbon nanotube memory, phase change memory, magnetic spin memory, and resistive memory, and each has unique characteristics that can complicate systems designed to exploit them. The JEDEC DDR5 NVRAM specification in process intends to bridge the differences between the technologies and provide systems designers with a unified specification for DRAM-class persistent memory. Nantero NRAM is a NVRAM based on carbon nanotube cell structures that provides a DDR4 or DDR5 interface to the system, and provides additional enhancements to yield 20% higher performance at the same clock rate.

Learning Objectives: 1) Attendees are exposed to system level advantages of memory class storage devices that operate at DRAM speeds but provide data persistence; 2) JEDEC is working on a new specification to standardize the interface to a variety of NVRAMs which provide memory class storage; 3) Nantero NRAM is a memory class storage device with better than DRAM performance.