The Prophet has arrived

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Early last week, I had a catch up with my friend. He was excited to share with me the new company he just joined. It was ProphetStor. It was a catchy name and after our conversation, I have decided to spend a bit of my weekend afternoon finding out more about the company and its technology.

From another friend at FalconStor, I knew of this company several months ago. Ex-FalconStor executives have ventured to found ProphetStor as the next generation of storage resource orchestration engine. And it has found a very interesting tack to differentiate from the many would-bes of so-called “software-defined storage” leaders. ProphetStor made their early appearance at the OpenStack Summit in Hong Kong back in November last year, positioning several key technologies including OpenStack Cinder, SNIA CDMI (Cloud Data Management Interface) and SMI-S (Storage Management Initiative Specification) to provide federation of storage resources discovery, provisioning and automation. 

The federation of storage resources and services solution is aptly called ProphetStor Federator. The diagram I picked up from the El Reg article presents the Federator working with different OpenStack initiatives quite nicely below:  There are 3 things that attracted me to the uniqueness of ProphetStor.

1. The underlying storage resources, be it files, objects, or blocks, can be presented and exposed as Cinder-style volumes.

2. The ability to define the different performance capabilities and SLAs (IOPS, throughput and latency) from the underlying storage resources and matching them to the right application requirements.

3. The use of SNIA of SMI-S and CDMI Needless to say that the Federator software will abstract the physical and logical structures of any storage brands or storage architectures, giving it a very strong validation of the “software-defined storage (SDS)” concept.

While the SDS definition is still being moulded in the marketplace (and I know that SNIA already has a draft SDS paper out), the ProphetStor SDS concept does indeed look similar to the route taken by EMC ViPR. The use of the control plane (ProphetStor Federator) and the data plane (underlying physical and logical storage resource) is obvious.

I wrote about ViPR many moons ago in my blog and I see ProphetStor as another hat in the SDS ring. I grabbed the screenshot (below) from the ProphetStor website which I thought did beautifully explained what ProphetStor is from 10,000 feet view.

ProphetStor How it works

The Cinder-style volume is a class move. It preserves the sanctity of many enterprise applications which still need block storage volumes but now it comes with a twist. These block storage volumes now will have different capability and performance profiles, tagged with the relevant classifications and SLAs.

And this is where SNIA SMI-S discovery component is critical because SMI-S mines these storage characteristics and presents them to the ProphetStor Federator for storage resource classification. For storage vendors that do not have SMI-S support, ProphetStor can customize the relevant interfaces to the proprietary API to discover the storage characteristics.

On the north-end, SNIA CDMI works with the ProphetStor Federator’s Offer & Provisioning functions to bundle wrap various storage resources for the cloud and other traditional storage network architectures.

I have asked my friend for more technology deep-dive materials (he has yet to reply me) of ProphetStor to ascertain what I have just wrote. (Simon, you have to respond to me!)

This is indeed very exciting times knowing ProphetStor as one of the early leaders in the SDS space. And I like to see ProphetStor go far with this.

Now let us pray … because the prophet has arrived.

SMB Witness Protection Program

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No, no, FBI is not in the storage business and there are no witnesses to protect.

However, SMB 3.0 has introduced a RPC-based mechanism to inform the clients of any state change in the SMB servers. Microsoft calls it Service Witness Protocol [SWP], and its objective is provide a much faster notification service allow the SMB 3.0 clients to do a failover. In previous SMB 1.0 and even in SMB 2.x, the SMB clients rely on time-out services. The time-out services, either SMB or TCP, could take up as much as 30-45 seconds, and this creates a high latency that is disruptive to enterprise applications.

SMB 3.0, as mentioned in my previous post, had a total revamp, and is now enterprise ready. In what Microsoft calls “Continuously Available” File Service, the SMB 3.0 supports clustered or scale-out file servers. The SMB shares must be shared as “Continuously Available” shares and mapped to SMB 3.0 clients. As shown in the diagram below (provided by SNIA’s webinar),

SMB 3.0 CA Shares

Client A mapping to Server 1 share (\\srv1\CAshr). Client A has a share “handle” that establishes a connection with a corresponding state of the session. The state of the session is synchronously kept consistent with a corresponding state in Server 2.

The Service Witness Protocol is not responsible for the synchronization of the states in the SMB file server cluster. Microsoft has left the HA/cluster/scale-out capability to the proprietary technology method of the NAS vendor. However, SWP regularly observes the status of all services under its watch. Continue reading →

SMB on steroids but CIFS lord isn’t pleased

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I admit it!

I am one of the guilty parties who continues to use CIFS (Common Internet File System) to represent the Windows file sharing protocol. And a lot of vendors continue to use the “CIFS” word loosely without knowing that it was a something from a bygone era. One of my friends even pronounced it as “See Fist“, which sounded even funnier when he said it. (This is for you Adrian M!)

And we couldn’t be more wrong because we shouldn’t be using the CIFS word anymore. It is so 90’s man! And the tell-tale signs have already been there but most of us chose to ignore it with gusto. But a recent SNIA Webinar titled “SMB 3.0 – New opportunities for Windows Environment” aims to dispel our incompetence and change our CIFS-venture to the correct word – SMB (Server Message Block).

A selfie photo of Dennis Chapman, Senior Technical Director for Microsoft Solutions at NetApp from the SNIA webinar slides above, wants to inform all of us that … SMB History Continue reading →

Has Object Storage become the everything store?

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I picked up a copy of latest Brad Stone’s book, “The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon“ at the airport on my way to Beijing last Saturday. I have been reading it my whole time I have been in Beijing, reading in awe about the turbulent ups and downs of Amazon.com.

The Everything Store cover

In its own serendipitous ways, Object-based Storage Devices (OSDs) have been floating in my universe in the past few weeks. Seems like OSDs have been getting a lot of coverage lately and suddenly, while in the shower, I just had an epiphany!

Are storage vendors now positioning Object-based Storage Devices (OSDs) as Everything Store?

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HDS HNAS kicks ass

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I am dusting off the cobwebs of my blog. After almost 3 months of inactivity, (and trying to avoid the Social Guidelines Media of my present company), I have bolstered enough energy to start writing again. I am tired, and I am finishing off the previous engagements prior to joining HDS. But I am glad those are coming to an end, with the last job in Beijing next week.

So officially, I will be in HDS as of November 4, 2013 . And to get into my employer’s good books, I think I should start with something that HDS has proved many critics wrong. The notion that HDS is poor with NAS solutions has been dispelled with a recent benchmark report from SPECSfs, especially when it comes to NFS file performance. HDS has never been much of a big shouter about their HNAS, even back in the days of OEM with BlueArc. The gap period after the BlueArc acquisition was also, in my opinion, quiet unless it was the gestation period for this Kick-Ass announcement a couple of weeks ago. Here is one of the news circling in the web, from the ever trusty El-Reg.

HDS has never been big shouting like the guys, like EMC and NetApp, who have plenty of marketing dollars to spend. EMC Isilon and NetApp C-Mode have always touted their mighty SPECSfs numbers, usually with a high number of controllers or nodes behind the benchmarks. More often than not, many readers would probably focus more on the NFSops/sec figures rather than the number of heads required to generate the figures.

Unaware of this HDS announcement, I was already asking myself that question about NFSops/sec per SINGLE controller head. So, on September 26 2013, I did a table comparing some key participants of the SPECSfs2008_nfs.v3 and here is the table:

SPECSfs2008_nfs.v3-26-Sept-2013In the last columns of the 2 halves (which I have highlighted in Red), the NFSops/sec/single controller head numbers are shown. I hope that readers would view the performance numbers more objectively after reading this. Therefore, I let you make your own decisions but ultimately, they are what they are. One should not be over-mesmerized by the super million NFSops/sec until one looks under the hood. Secondly, one should also look at things more holistically such as $/NFSops/sec, $/ORT (overall response time), and $/GB/NFSops/managed and other relevant indicators of the systems sold.

But I do not want to take the thunder away from HDS’ HNAS platforms in this recent benchmark. In summary,

HDS SPECbench summaryTo reach a respectable number of 607,647 NFSops/sec with a sub-second response time is quite incredible. The ORT of 0.59 msecs should not be taken lightly because to eke just about a 0.1 msec is not easy. Therefore, reaching 0.5 millisecond is pretty awesome.

This is my first blog after 3 months. I am glad to be back and hopefully with the monkey off my back (I am referring to my outstanding engagements), I can concentrating on writing good stuff again. I know, I know … I still owe some people some entries. It’s great to be back 🙂

Correcting NCQ incorrect portrayal with SSDs

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A kind reader, Baruch Even, has pointed out my ignorance with SATA Native Command Queuing (NCQ) working with Solid State Drives (SSDs) in my previous blog.

In the post, I have haphazardly stated that NCQ was meant for spinning mechanical drives. I was wrong.

NCQ does indeed improve the performance of SSDs using SATA interfaces, and sometimes as much as 15-20%. I know there is a statement in the SATA Wikipedia page that says that NCQ boosted IOPS by 100% but I would take a much more realistic view of things rather than setting the expectations too high.

The typical SSD consists of flash storage spread across multiple chips, which in turn are a bunch of flash packages. Within each of the flash packages, there are different dies (as in manufacturing terminology “die”, not related to the word of “death”) that houses planes (not related to aeroplanes) and subsequently into blocks and pages.

Continue reading →

Boosting Solid States beyond SATA

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Lately, I have been getting deeper and deeper into low-level implementation related to storage technologies. In my previous blog, I was writing my learning adventure with Priority Flow Control (PFC) and intend to further the Data Center Bridging concepts with future blog entries.

Before I left for Sydney for a holiday last week, I got sidetracked into exciting stuff that’s happening in my daily encounters with friends and new friends. 2 significant storage related technologies fell onto my lap. One is NVMe (Non-Volatile Memory express) and the other FPGA (Field Programmable Gate Array).

While this blog is going to be about NVMe, I actually found FPGA much more exciting to me. Through conversations, I found that there are 2 “biggies” in the FPGA world, and they are designed and manufactured by Xilink and Altera. I admit that I have not done my homework on FPGA yet, having just returned from Sydney last night. I will blog about FPGA in future blogs.

But NVMe is also an important technology direction to the storage world as well.

I think most of us are probably already mesmerized by solid state drives. The bombardment of marketing, presentations, advertising and whatever else the vendors do to promote (and self-promote) solid state drives are inundating the intellectual senses of consumers and enterprises alike. And yet, many vendors do not explain both the pros and cons of integrating solid states into their IT environment. Even worse, many don’t even know the strengths and weaknesses of solid states, hence creating some exaggeration that continues to create a spiral vortex of inaccuracies. Like a self-feeding frenzy, the industry seems to have placed solid state storage as the saviour of the enterprise storage world. Go figure with that!

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Supercharging Ethernet … with a PAUSE

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It’s been a while since I wrote. I had just finished a 2-week stint in Melbourne, conducting 2 Data ONTAP classes and had a blast.

But after almost 3 1/2 months of doing little except teaching NetApp classes, the stint is ending. I wanted it that way, to take a break and also to take on a new challenge. I will be taking on a job with Hitachi Data Systems, going back to the industry that I have termed the “Wild, wild west”. After a 4 1/2-year hiatus, I think that industry still behaves the way it is .. brash, exclusive, rich! The oligarchy of the oilmen are still laughing their way to the banks. And it will be my job to sell storage (and cloud) solutions to them.

In my Netapp (and EMC) engagements in the past 6 months, I have seen the greater adoption of iSCSI over Fibre Channel, and many has predicted that 10Gigabit Ethernet will be the infliction point where iSCSI can finally stand shoulder-to-shoulder with Fibre Channel. After all, 10 Gigabit/sec is definitely faster than 8 Gigabit/sec Fibre Channel, right? WRONG! (I am perfectly aware there is a 16 Gigabit/sec Fibre Channel, but can’t you see I am trying to start an argument here?)

Delivering SCSI data load over iSCSI on 10 Gigabit/sec Ethernet does not necessarily mean that it would be faster than delivering the same payload over 8 Gigabit/sec Fibre Channel. This statement can be viewed in many different ways and hence the favourite IT reply would be … “It depends“.

I would leave this performance argument for another day but today we are going to talk about some of the key additions to supercharge 10 Gigabit Ethernet for data delivery in storage networking capacity. In addition, 10 Gigabit Ethernet is the primary transport for Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) and it is absolutely critical that 10 Gigabit Ethernet must be close to as reliable as Fibre Channel for data delivery in a storage network.

Ethernet is a non-deterministic protocol, and therefore, its delivery result is dependent on many factors. Likewise 10 Gigabit Ethernet has inherited part of that feature. The delivery of data over Ethernet can be lossy, i.e. packets can get lost and the upper layer application protocols will have to respond to detecte the dropped packets and to ensure lost packets are redelivered to complete the consignment. But delivering data in a storage network cannot be lossy and in most cases of SANs, the requirement is to have the data arrive in the sequence they were delivered. The SAN fabric (especially with the common services of Layer 3 of the FC protocol stack) and the deterministic nature of Fibre Channel protocol were the reasons many has relied on Fibre Channel SAN technology for more than a decade. How can 10 Gigabit Ethernet respond?

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Novell Filr Technology Overview – Part 2

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Part 1 of the Novell Filr Technology Overview was too heavy and I had to break up to share the feature of storage.

How will storage space look like to the different access methods or mobile device? Novell Filr does not deviate from the comfortable interface that is functionally similar to applications such as Dropbox. Under the guise of folders and files, the interface is a familiar one. It is called “MY FILES”.

But under the wraps of “MY FILES”, Novell Filr consolidates both Personal Storage and Net Folders locations under one roof. Here’s a look at “MY FILES” and how it consolidates various underlying file storage structure:

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Novell Filr Technology Overview Part 1

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I am like a kid opening presents on Christmas mornings today.

Reading and understanding the Novell Filr architecture is exciting with each feature revealing something different, some that may not be entirely unique, but something done simplified. Novell Filr has simplified a few things that are much more appreciated from storage guys like me. Let me share with you this technology learning session.

2 Key Features

First of all, I see the Novell Filr as a Secure Access Broker.

The Novell Filr provides file access, file sharing and file synchronization with multiple mobile devices. The mobility revolution in the likes of smart phones, tablets and other “connected” devices in our personal lives are changing our habits in the way we want information to be accessed, which I can summarize in 2 words – SIMPLE, UNINHIBITED. It is the lack of inhibition that scares the hell out of IT because IT is losing control, and corporations fear data leaks.

Novell Filr lets users access their home directories and network folders from their mobile devices. It lets the users synchronize their files with Windows and MacOS computers, regardless if these devices are internal of the company’s firewalled networks or external of it. Here’s a simple diagram of how Novell Filr defines its position as a Secure Access Broker.

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