Experiences in Clustering CIFS for IBM Scale Out Network Attached Storage

Clustering the CIFS and SMB2 protocol is enabling managing large scale data in a single name space scaling the bandwidth of access as well. IBM SONAS uses clustering across various nodes while scaling capacity indepently by a second tier of nodes. Experiences with clustering CIFS including the underlying clustered file system the past years led to improvements in regards of performance and stability. Utilizing SMB2 as the protocol leads to improvements beyond CIFS capabilities. Compared to traditional active-passive configurations larger clusters provide active-active configurations allowing flexible maintenance and management. This talk should give an insight on resolved performance challenges in applying clustered CIFS with different installations and workloads including improvements being made or currently applied to Samba and CTDB for being used in an Enterprise product.

Learning Objectives

Clustering and performance, how to achieve both
Requirements to clustered file systems by clustering NAS
Requirements to protocol implementations by clustering NAS
Benefits of clustering for managing Scale Out NAS devices