Storage Developer Conference

A tutorial on using the open source persistent memory (PMEM) programming library offered at pmem.io; including examples providing power-fail safety, while storing data on PMEM. Programming examples will zero in on pmem.io’s transactional object store (i.e. “libpmemobj”) library, which is layered on the SNIA NVM Programming Model. The examples covered will demonstrate proper integration techniques, macros, C API, key theory concepts, terminology, and present in depth overview of what the library offers for PMEM programming initiatives.

Learning Objectives: 1) Overview of persistent memory programming; 2) Close examination of the transactional object store library (libpmemobj); 3) Code integration walkthrough.

The SNIA NVM Programming model enables applications to consume emerging persistent memory technologies through step-wise evolution to greater and greater value. Starting with an overview of the latest revision of the NVM programming model specification this session summarizes the recent work of the NVM programming TWG in areas of high availability and atomicity. We take an application view of ongoing technical innovation in a persistent memory ecosystem.

Learning Objectives: 1) Learn what the SNIA NVM programming TWG has been working on; 2) Learn how applications can move incrementally towards greater and greater benefit from persistent memory; 3) Learn about the resources available to help developers plan and implement persistent memory aware software.

Building on the concepts presented in the Introduction to Swordfish (and Redfish) sessions, this session will go into more detail on the new Swordfish API specification. Learning Objectives: 1) Introduction to the specifics of the Swordfish, API, 2) Working with the Swordfish Schema.

The SNIA’s Scalable Storage Management Technical Work Group (SSM TWG) is working to create and publish an open industry standard specification for storage management that defines a customer centric interface for the purpose of managing storage and related data services. This specification builds on the DMTF’s Redfish specification’s using RESTful methods and JSON formatting. This session will present an overview of the specification being developed by SSM including the scope targeted in the initial (V1) release in 2016 vs later (2017). This session will also provide the positioning of the specification developed by the SSM TWG vs SMI-S as well as the base Redfish specification.

Hyperscaler companies as well as large enterprises who build their own datacenters have specific requirements for new features in storage drives. The SNIA Technical Council has created a white paper on these requirements and how current and future standards and open source projects can address them.

This talk will present the results of the the TC research in this area and discuss how SNIA and other standards bodies are making changes to accommodate them.

Learning Objectives: 1) Learn about Datacenter customer drive requirements, 2) Learn about existing and new standards for drive interfaces,

3)Learn about open source projects that address these requirement.

Swift on File enables the swift object store hosted over clustered file system to have file as well as object access for the same data. Such multi protocol access enables various use-cases where data can be ingested via object and processed for analytics over file protocols (SMB/NFS/POSIX). In another manifestation, data can be accessed or shared by the user interchangeable via different protocols enabling user data sync n share across protocols.

For some of these use-cases, there is a strong need to have common User Identity management across object and file protocols so that one can leverage the underlying common file system features like quota management per user or group, per user/group placement policies on data or even have common authorisation across file and object . In order to achieve this, the approaches need to ensure that objects created by an user via Swift is associated with the user's user ID (UID) and group ID (GID) which is same when the object is accessed by that user via file protocols like NFS/SMB/POSIX (where typically the ID's are stored in a centrally ID mapping server like Microsoft AD or LDAP).

This presentation discusses in detail the various issues and nuances associated with having common ID management across Swift object access and file access and presents an approach to solve them without changes in core Swift code by leveraging powerful SWIFT middleware framework.

Learning Objectives: 1) Understanding Openstack SWIFT Object Store and File access challanges, 2) Learning about OpenStack middleware which will help developers on its usage, 3) Learning ID management concepts for File and Object, 4) Learning the different approaches to solve SWIFT on File ID management problem, 5) Learning the algorithm that developers can deploy to have common ID management between object (SWIFT) and FILE.

The implementation of advanced SMB3 features is a broad and important set of topics on the Samba roadmap. One of these SMB3 features that is currently being actively worked on is Multi-Channel, a kind of channel bonding at the SMB level intended to increase both performance and fault-tolerance of SMB sessions. It is not only one of the most generally useful features of SMB3 but also a prerequisite for enabling RDMA as a transport for SMB with SMB Direct.

This talk will provide details about the current project to finish the implementation of SMB3 Multi-Channel in Samba, explaining the challenges for development and how they are solved. The presentation will include demos. The talk will conclude with a brief outlook how SMB Direct support can be added to Samba.

Learning Objectives: 1) Refresher on Multi-Channel, 2) State of implementation of Multi-Channel in Samba, 3) Challenges for Samba to implement Multi-Channel, 4) Design of Multi-Channel in Samba, 5) Outlook to SMB Direct support.

Practical experience from implementing the OASIS Key Management Interoperability Protocol (KMIP) and from deploying and interoperability testing multiple vendor implementations of KMIP form the bulk of the material covered. Guidance will be provided that covers the key issues to require that your vendors address and how to distinguish between simple vendor tick-box approaches to standard conformance and actual interoperable solutions.

Learning Objectives:

1) In-depth knowledge of the core of the OASIS KMIP

2) Awareness of requirements for practical interoperability

3) Guidance on important of conformance testing

In this presentation we extend previous work to include p2p transfers between NVMe devices and RDMA capable NICs running protocols like Infiniband, RoCE and iWARP. We present experimental results using both 10Gbe iWARP and 56G Infiniband NICs that show how the latency associated with remote transfer of data can be reduced whilst also offloading the CPU allowing it to focus on other tasks. We show how this work can act as a precursor for the NVMe over Fabrics work currently being standardized. We also show how the Controller Memory Buffer (CMB) feature introduced in NVMe 1.2 be utilized in a novel fashion to aid this work.

Learning Objectives:

1) What are the benefits of NVM Express

2) How can NVM Express and RDMA be utilized prior to NVMe over Fabrics

3) How Donard code builds on open-source code

4) How latency, bandwidth and CPU offload can all be improved using peer-2-peer

Programming with persistent memory is hard, similar to the type of programming a file system developer does because of the need to write changes out in a way that maintains consistency. Applications must be re-architected to change data stored in two tiers (DRAM and storage) into three tiers (DRAM, pmem and storage). This presentation will review key attributes of persistent memory as well as outline architectural and design considerations for making an application persistent memory aware. This discussion will conclude with examples showing how to modify an application to provide consistency when using persistent memory.

Learning Objectives: 1) Introduce how persistent memory differs from DRAM and standard storage for storing application data. 2) Show examples of the architectural considerations for making an application persistent memory aware, 3) Give examples of how to modify an existing application to utilize persistent memory, 4) Discuss the open source Non-Volatile Memory Library (NVML) available on GitHub for use to help with persistent memory programming