Networking

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Jump straight to an abstract:

• SAS and SATA Combine to Change the Storage Market
• Fibre Channel Technologies: Current and Future
• NAS and iSCSI Technical Overview
• pNFS, Parallel Storage for Grid and Enterprise Computing
• PCI Express Impact on Storage Architectures and Capabilities
• Ethernet Enhancements for Storage
• Fibre Channel Over Ethernet (FCoE)
• VM-aware SANS: How a SAN Can Support Mobility, Security and Manageability
• SANs Across MANs and WANs

The Abstracts

SAS and SATA Combine to Change the Storage Market
Marty Czekalski and Harry Mason
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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, overview of it’s technical capabilities, 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. Also included will be an update of the new capabilities included in 6Gb/sec SAS as well as the new SAS connectivity roadmap.

Learning Objectives:

• Learn about SAS and SATA technology
• Learn how they are changing the way storage is implemented
• Learn about the latest updates to the specifications

 

Fibre Channel Technologies “Current & Future"
Dr. M. K. Jibbe
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The objectives of this tutorial are:

1. Provide the user with use cases on how Fibre Channel Structure, Speed and Feed are used with other technologies
   1. a) The goals of the 8GFC use cases are to highlight its speed and performance and to demonstrate its role in increased processing density, faster server I/O buses, device virtualization, and storage product expansions
2. Project the market outlook and roadmap of Fibre Channel
3. Share what is New in Fibre Channel Standards for Protocols APIs, and Management
   1. FCoE -> FC from a SAN concept
   2. Fabric Services
   3. Virtualization
   4. Operational Flexibility

 

NAS and iSCSI Technical Overview
Wolfgang Singer
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Reuirements for additional storage are booming. There is a strong trend that most of today’s storage will be consolidated and 'networked'.   This presentation shows the different approaches to 'Storage Networking’ and discusses file and block I/O related subjects.

Learning Objectives:

• What are the differences between SAN, NAS, NAS Gateways and iSCSI
• What are the advantages and disadvantages of these technologies
• Which problems does NAS solve
• Why is NAS better than a standard file server
• What can be expected in the future

 

pNFS, Parallel Storage for Grid, Virtualization and Database Computing
Joshua Konkle
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This session will appeal to Virtual Data Center Managers, Database Server administrators, and those that are seeking a fundamental understanding pNFS. This session will cover the four key reasons to start working with NFSv4 today.  Explain the storage layouts for parallel NFS; NFSv4.1 Files, Blocks and T10 OSD Objects.  We’ll conclude the session with an uses cases for database access, enterprise and desktop virtualization, including deduplication options.

Learning Objectives:

• Learn the four reasons to deploy NFSv4 today; a prelude to pNFS
• Understand the three storage layouts for parallel NFS; not just files, but blocks and objects too
• Uses cases for databases, enterprise and desktop virtualization

 

PCI Express Impact on Storage Architectures and Capabilities
Ron Emerick
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PCI Express Gen2 and Gen3, IO Virtualization, FCoE, SSD are here or coming soon. This session describes PCI Express, Single Root and Multi Root IO Virtualization and the implications on FCoE, SSD and impacts of all these changes on storage connectivity, storage transfer rates. The potential implications to Storage Industry and Data Center Infrastructures will also be discussed.

Learning Objectives:

• Knowledge of PCI Express Architecture, PCI Express Roadmap, System Root Complexes and IO Virtualization
• Expected Industry Roll Out of latest IO Technologies and required Root Complex capabilities
• Implications and Impacts of FCoE, SSD and IO to Storage Connectivity
• IO Virtualization connectivity possibilities in the Data Center (via PCI Express)
• What does the 2020 Data Center look like?

 

Ethernet  Enhancements for Storage
Sunil Ahluwalia
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A key challenge that the network and storage industries are now facing is the abundance of new high speed interconnect protocols proposed for future data center applications. What customers really want is to reduce the number of disparate networks and minimize the complexity surrounding the management of their data centers. In this presentation we take a peek into what the future may hold for high speed fabrics and investigate the potential for their unification. We will provide a market and technical overview of the competitive landscape for next generation 10GbE technologies with particular focus on the operational characteristics and implementation aspects of Ethernet. The audience will learn how hardware, software, and standards are driving the vision of a unified fabric utilizing 10GE for the data center of the future.

Learning Objectives:

• Understand the rationale for Unified fabric
• Understand the standards that enable "lossless" Ethernet
• Learn how the new Ethernet Enhancements are used in new applications such as FCoE

 

Fibre Channel Over Ethernet (CoE)
John Hufferd
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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 presentation will show the general FCoE concept and describe how it might be exploited in a Data Center environment and its position with regards to FC and iSCSI.  The requirements on the Ethernet Fabric for support of FC protocols will also be shown.     The benefits of converged I/O (storage messaging, clustering, etc.) to the Data Center will be discussed.    The state of the FCoE protocol (Standards position, probable adoption projections, etc.) will also be presented.

Learning Objectives:

• The audience will gain a general 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 the benefits of converged I/O and how a Fibre Channel protocol can share an Ethernet network with other Ethernet based protocols
• The audience will gain an understanding of potential business value and configurations that will be appropriate for gaining maximum value from this converged I/O capability

 

VM-aware SANs:  How a SAN Can Support Mobility, Security and Manageability
Fabrizio Corno
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Virtualization of Data Centers which includes Server, Storage and Network has alleviated some of the growing challenges related to consolidation, space constrain along with demand for high power and cooling requirements.  End to end virtualization helps to increase efficiency and reduce overall TCO considerably.  Virtual Machines (VM) made it possible to run multiple applications and operating systems in a single machine.  The proliferation of VM’s introduces new challenges and issues for SAN and LAN.  These Challenges include loss of visibility, security, traffic isolation of applications and management complexity.   This section explores the advanced features required for fabric (SAN) scalability , performance management , trending and capacity planning for each VM, VM mobility without compromising security, Service Differentiation (QoS) on per VM and data protection on per VM.

SANs Across MANs and WANs
Dr. Joseph White
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Extending storage networks across distance is essential to BC/DR (Business Continuance/Disaster Recovery), compliance, and data center consolidation. This tutorial will provide both an overview of available techniques and technologies for extending storage networks into the Metro and Wide area networks and a discussion of the applications and scenarios where distance is important. Transport technologies and techniques discussed will include SONET, CWDM, DWDM, Metro Ethernet, TCP/IP, FC credit expansion, data compression, and FCP protocol optimizations (Fast Write, etc). Scenarios discussed will include disk mirroring (both synchronous and asynchronous), remote backup, and remote block access.

Learning Objectives:

• Overview of transport technologies used in Metro and Wide area networks
• Overview of protocol and transport optimizations for Metro and Wide area networks including data compression and fast write
• Overview of deployment scenarios and business drivers for extending storage networks across metro and wide are networks