Networking

The Abstracts

TCP/IP Optimizations for Block Storage

Joseph White Download

With all of the interest in using IP storage for servers, business continuance, and disaster recovery, the various IP storage protocols such as iSCSI, iFCP, and FCIP have gained increasing attention from storage networking professionals and administrators. TCP/IP provides the transport for these upper level protocols. Knowledge of TCP/IP and how it applies to block storage and bulk data transfers is critical for optimal deployment of IP storage solutions. This session provides an overview of TCP/IP as it applies to block storage protocols and bulk data transfers. The session will begin with an overview of TCP/IP and continue with storage networking considerations when using high bandwidth, long latency, congested, or impaired networks. This session will primarily focus on modifications and enhancements used to mitigate these negative effects on TCP/IP performance.

Learning Objectives

• Gain an understanding of the TCP/IP protocol from a tutorial overview with emphasis on application of TCP/IP to block storage transport.
• The audience will gain an understanding of how a Fibre Channel protocol can share an Ethernet network with other Ethernet based protocols.

Fibre Channel Over Ethernet

John Hufferd Download

A new concept is currently moving through the Fibre Channel (T11) standards committee called Fire Channel over Ethernet (FCoE). FCoE is a concept that encapsulates Fibre Channel frames into Ethernet Frames and amalgamates these technologies into a network fabric that can support Fibre Channel protocols and other Ethernet based protocols (such as TCP/IP, UDP/IP etc.). The tutorial will show the Fundamentals of the FCoE concept and describe how it might be exploited in a Data Center environment. It will also be positioned with respect to normal Fibre Channel and iSCSI. Note to submission reviewers: There are two proposals that are being investigated, within the T11 committee, to address the FCoE concept. This presentation will present the common features of both proposals along with any committee agreements that are current at the time of the presentation.

Learning Objectives

• The audience will gain an understanding of the concept of using a Data Center type Ethernet for the transmission of Fibre Channel protocols
• The audience will gain an understanding of how a Fibre Channel protocol can share an Ethernet network with other Ethernet based protocols.
• The audience will understand when the various storage connection and protocols types (FC, iSCSI, and FCoE) are best used in various environments.

Infiniband Technology Overview

Dror Goldenberg Download

The InfiniBand architecture brings fabric consolidation to the data center. Storage networking can concurrently run with clustering, communication and management fabrics over the same infrastructure, preserving the behavior of multiple fabrics. The tutorial provides an overview of the InfiniBand architecture including discussion of High Speed, Low Latency, Channel I/O, QoS scheduling, partitioning, high availability and protocol offload. InfiniBand based storage protocols, iSER (iSCSI RDMA Protocol), NFS over RDMA and SCSI RDMA Protocol (SRP) are introduced and compared with alternative storage protocols, such as iSCSI and FCP. The tutorial further enumerates value-added features that InfiniBand brings to clustered storage, such as atomic operations and end to end data integrity.

Learning Objectives

• Understand the InfiniBand architecture and feature set.
• Understand the benefits of InfiniBand for networked storage.
• Understand the standard InfiniBand storage protocols (iSER, NFS over RDMA and SRP).

PCI Express and Storage

Joshua Tseng Download

Access to data hosted in central data centers has been a continuous challenge for application users in remote branch offices. WAN-related performance problems associated with bandwidth and latency usually pressure IT managers to deploy file and application servers in the branch offices themselves, in order to maintain application performance and end-user productivity. But maintaining and backing-up remote server and storage assets outside of the data center is not only expensive, it also creates significant security risks. This session explores new approaches involving disk-based deduplication, TCP protocol optimization, and application-level chattiness mitigation to address this long-standing productivity vs. cost-efficiency issue. We will compare and contrast the strengths and weaknesses of these new approaches with more traditional methods of addressing this problem.

Learning Objectives

• Examine the pros and cons of compression, caching, and adding WAN bandwidth, and understand why none of these measures adequately solves the essential problem.
• Understand why many applications perform poorly over the WAN in an environment with high latency and/or limited bandwidth.
• Explore how TCP protocol optimization, application-level chattiness mitigation, and new disk-based deduplication approaches that can dramatically improve performance over the WAN and enable greater centralization of storage resources

Fibre Channel Technologies: Current and Future

Mahmoud Jibbe, Steven Wilson and Tom Hammond-Doel Download

The objectives of this tutorial are: 1) provide the user with a Primer on Fibre Channel based on criteria such as Flexible, Scalable, Speed, Performance, Distance, Node connectivity and Low cost, Communication, Data Overhead, Redundancy, Availability, Failover, and Applicability in SAN (Easy of use), 2) Project the market outlook and roadmap of Fibre Channel in term how will FC continue to meet customers evolving needs, 3) Faster speeds, Bandwidth/Cost leadership, Investment protection, Additional capabilities, Lower cost solutions, and Simplified solutions (Plug-n-play), 4) Share what is New in Fibre Channel Standards for Protocols APIs, and Management such as Channel and Fabric Device Management Interface, configuration improvement, Operational Flexibility and Scalability (Storage virtualization, routing architecture, and SATA tunneling), and Security.

Learning Objectives

• Provide the user with a Primer on Fibre Channel
• Project the market outlook and roadmap of Fibre Channel
• Share what is New in Fibre Channel Standards for Protocols APIs, and Management

IP Storage Protocols - iSCSI

John Hufferd Download

This tutorial will explain the fundamentals of iSCSI and explain deployments in various environments. The protocol is explained, its relationship to SCSI is explained, and the use of Software and Hardware iSCSI initiators and targets will be discussed as will the companion protocols for discovery and security.

The attendee will get the fundamentals of iSCSI. They will understand the various Configurations/environments, and the various companion Processes.

SAS & SATA Combine to Change the Storage Market

Harry Mason and Martin Czekalski  Download

Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) allows systems to be built that accommodate large numbers of either SAS and/or SATA hard disk drives. This presentation, intended for OEM, System Builders and End-Users, describes the capabilities of the SAS interface, how it's designed to interoperate with SATA drives and when combined, how these technologies can be combined to deliver some very compelling storage solutions.

Learning Objective: An understanding of SAS and how it's changing the capabilities of direct attached storage