Category: Storage over Ethernet SIG

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Too Proud to Ask Webcast Series Continues – Getting from Here to There Pod

Fred Zhang Leave a comment

As part of the SNIA Ethernet Storage Forum’s successful “Everything You Wanted To Know About Storage But Were Too Proud To Ask” series, we’ve discussed numerous topics about storage devices, protocols, and networks. As we examine some of these topics further, we begin to tease out some subtle nuances; subtle, yet important nevertheless.

On May 9th we’ll take on the terms and concepts that affect Storage Architectures as a whole in “Everything You Wanted To Know About Storage But Were Too Proud To Ask – Part Sepia – Getting from Here to There.” In particular, we’ll be looking at those aspects that can help or hinder storage systems inside the network:

  • Encapsulation vs. Tunneling
  • IOPS vs. Latency vs. Jitter
  • Quality of Service (QoS)

Each of these topics has a profound impact on storage designs and performance, but they are often misunderstood. We’re going to help you become clear on all of these very important storage concepts so that you can grok storage just a little bit more.

We hope you will join us on May 9th at 10:00 am PT and that you won’t be “too proud” to ask our experts your questions! Register today.

Think there may be other storage topics you feel you should understand better? Check out the rest of the webcasts in this series here.

Update: If you missed the live event, it’s now available  on-demand. You can also  download the webcast slides.

2017 Ethernet Roadmap for Networked Storage

Fred Zhang Leave a comment

When SNIA’s Ethernet Storage Forum (ESF) last looked at the Ethernet Roadmap for Networked Storage in 2015, we anticipated a world of rapid change. The list of advances in 2016 is nothing short of amazing

  • New adapters, switches, and cables have been launched supporting 25, 50, and 100Gb Ethernet speeds including support from major server vendors and storage startups
  • Multiple vendors have added or updated support for RDMA over Ethernet
  • The growth of NVMe storage devices and release of the NVMe over Fabrics standard are driving demand for both faster speeds and lower latency in networking
  • The growth of cloud, virtualization, hyper-converged infrastructure, object storage, and containers are all increasing the popularity of Ethernet as a storage fabric

The world of Ethernet in 2017 promises more of the same. Now we revisit the topic with a look ahead at what’s in store for Ethernet in 2017.   Join us on December 1, 2016 for our live webcast, “2017 Ethernet Roadmap to Networked Storage.”

With all the incredible advances and learning vectors, SNIA ESF has assembled a great team of experts to help you keep up. Here are some of the things to keep track of in the upcoming year:

  • Learn what is driving the adoption of faster Ethernet speeds and new Ethernet storage models
  • Understand the different copper and optical cabling choices available at different speeds and distances
  • Debate how other connectivity options will compete against Ethernet for the new cloud and software-defined storage networks
  • And finally look ahead with us at what Ethernet is planning for new connectivity options and faster speeds such as 200 and 400 Gigabit Ethernet

The momentum is strong with Ethernet, and we’re here to help you stay informed of the lightning-fast changes. Come join us to look at the future of Ethernet for storage and join this SNIA ESF webcast on December 1st. Register here.

Update: If you missed the live event, it’s now available  on-demand. You can also  download the webcast slides.

Ethernet Roadmap for Networked Storage Q&A

David Fair Leave a comment

Almost 200 people attended our joint Webcast with the Ethernet Alliance: “The 2015 Ethernet Roadmap for Networked Storage.” We had a lot of great questions during the live event, but we did not have time to answer them all. As promised, we’ve complied answers for all of the questions that came in. If you think of additional questions, please feel free to comment on this blog.

Q. What did you mean by parity of flash with HDD?

A. We were referring to the O’Reilly article in “Network Computing.”   O’Reilly is predicting parity in BOTH capacity and price in 2016.

Q. When do we expect IEEE standards ratification for 25G speed?

A. 2016.   You can see the exact schedule here.

Q. Do you envision the Enterprise, Cloud Providers, HPC, Financials getting rid of their 10/40GbE infrastructure and replacing that with 25/100GbE infrastructure in 2017? Will these customers deploy 100GbE/25GbE switch in the leaf layer in 2017?

A. Deployment will occur over a multi-year time span overall if only because switch infrastructure is expensive to upgrade, as reflected in the Crehan Research forecast.   New deployments will likely move to 25/100GbE as new switches with 100GbE downstream ports become available in 2016.     Just because the Cloud Service Providers are currently the most aggressive in driving new infrastructure purchases, they represent the largest early volumes for 25/100 GbE.   Enterprise is still in the midst of the transition from 1GbE to 10GbE.

Q. What are some of the developments on spanning-tree derivatives vs. Dykstra based derivatives such as OSPF, FSPF for switches?

A. Beyond the scope of this presentation on Ethernet.   Ethernet is defined by the IEEE for L1 and L2 in the ISO model.   Your questions are at L3 and L4, which is handled by organizations like IETF.

Q. With all the speeds possible who is working on flow control?

A. Flow control at the 802.1 level is supported in the Layer 1/2 PHY & MAC by setting upper bounds on the delay through each layer which allows higher layers to comprehend the delays & response times to pause frames. Each new speed & PHY in 802.3 is accompanied by delay constraint specifications to support this.

Q.   Do you have an overlay graphic that shows the Ethernet RDMA roadmap?   If so, is Ethernet storage the primary driver for that technology?

A.   Beyond the scope of this presentation on Ethernet.   Ethernet is defined by the IEEE for L1 and L2 in the ISO model.   Your questions are at L3 and L4, which is handled by organizations like IETF and the InfiniBand Trade Association.

Q. The adoption of faster and new Ethernet always has to do with the costs of acquiring new technology. How long do you think it will take to adopt/acquire faster Ethernet in datacenters now that the development is happening much faster than the last 20 years?

A. Please see the chart on slide 7 where Crehan Research predicts how fast the technology will diffuse into deployments.

Q. What do you expect as cost comparison between Ethernet and InfiniBand going forward?
Also, what work is being done to reduce latency?

A. Beyond the scope of this presentation.   Latency is primarily a consequence of design methodologies and semiconductor process technology, and thus under the control of the silicon device manufacturers.   Some vendors prioritize latency more than others.

Q. What’s the technical limitation as speeds go higher and higher?

A. A number of factors limit speeds going faster and faster, but the main problem is that materials attenuate signals as they travel at higher frequencies.

Q. Will 1GbE used for manageability purposes disappear from public cloud? If so, what is the expected time frame?

A. This is a choice for end users.   Most equipment is managed on a separate network for security concerns, but users can eliminate these management networks at any time.

Q. What are the relative market size predictions for the expanding number of standards (25G, 50G, 100G, 200G, etc.)?

A. See the Crehan Research forecast in the presentation.

Q. What is the major difference between SMF & MMF for the not so initiated?

A. The SMF has a 9um core while the MMF has a 50um core.   Different lasers are used for each fiber type and MMF typically goes 100 meters above 10GbE and SMF goes from 500m to 10km.

Q. Will 25G be available through both copper and fibre connectivity?

A. Yes.   IEEE 802.3 work is currently underway to specify 25Gb/s on twinax (“direct attach copper)” to 5 meters, printed circuit backplane up to ~1m, twisted pair copper to 30m, multimode fiber to 100m.   There is no technology barrier to 25G on SMF, just that a standards project to specify it has not started yet.

Q. This is interesting from a hardware viewpoint, but has nothing to do with storage yet.   Are we going to get to how this relates to storage other than saying flash drives are fast and only Ethernet can keep up?

A. Beyond the scope of this presentation on Ethernet.   Ethernet is defined by the IEEE for L1 and L2 in the ISO model.   Your questions are directed at the higher layers.   The key point of this webcast is that storage networking engineers need to pay much more attention to the Ethernet roadmap than they have historically, primarily because of NVM.

Q. How does “SFP 28” fit in this mix?   Is it required for 25G?

A. SFP28 connectors and modules are required for 25GbE because they give better performance than SFP+ that only works to 10GbE.

Q. Can you provide the quick difference between copper & optical on speed & costs?

A. Copper and optical Ethernet links are usually standardized at the same speed.   400GbE is not defining a copper link but an active Direct Attached Cable (DAC) will probably support 400GbE.   Cost depends on volume and many factors and is beyond the scope of this presentation.   Copper is usually a fraction of the cost of optical links.

Q. Do you think people will try to use multiple CAT 5e to get more aggregate bandwidth to the access points to avoid having to run Fibre to them?

A. IEEE is defining 2.5GBASE-T and 5GBASE-T to enable Cat5e to support faster wireless access points.

Q. When are higher speeds and PoE going to reach the point when copper based Ethernet will become a viable heat source for buildings thus helping the environment?

A. 🙂   IEEE is defining 4 wire PoE to deliver at least 60W to end devices.   You can find out more here.

Q. What are the use cases for 2.5Gb and 5.0Gb Base-T?

A. The leading use case for 2.5G/5GBASE-T is to provide the uplink for wireless LAN access points that support 802.11ac and future wireless technology.   Wireless LAN technology has advanced to the point where >1Gb/s BW is needed upstream from the AP, and 2.5G/5G provide a higher speed uplink while preserving the user’s investment in Cat5e/Cat6 cabling.

Q. Why not have only CFP2 sockets right away with things disabled for lower speeds for all the intervening years leading to full-fledged CFP2?

A. CFP2 is defined for 100GbE and 8 ports can be used on a 1U switch. 100GbE switches are shifting to QSFP28 so that 32 ports of 100GbE is supported in a 1U switch at low cost.   The CFP2 is much more expensive than QSFP28 and will not be used for lower speeds because of the high cost.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Relentless Advance Of Ethernet – And Ethernet Storage Networking

David Fair Leave a comment

As one Cisco colleague once said to me, “After the nuclear holocaust, there will be two things left: cockroaches and Ethernet.”   Not sure I like Ethernet’s unappealing company in that statement, but the truth it captures is that Ethernet, now entering its fifth decade (wow!), is ubiquitous and still continuing to advance at a breathtaking pace.   And as it advances, it advances the capabilities of storage networking based on the Ethernet backbone, be it file storage like NFS or SMB or block storage like iSCSI or FCoE.

Most recent evidence of Ethernet’s continuing and relentless evolution is illustrated in the 28 March 2014 announcement from the Ethernet Alliance congratulating the IEEE on formation of their IEEE P802.3bsâ„¢ Task Force:

The new group is chartered with the development of the IEEE P802.3bs 400 Gigabit Ethernet (GbE) project, which will define Ethernet Media Access Control (MAC) parameters, physical layer specifications, and management parameters for the transfer of Ethernet format frames at 400 Gb/s. As the leading voice of the Ethernet ecosystem, the Ethernet Alliance is ideally positioned to support this latest move towards standardizing and advancing 400Gb/s technologies through efforts such as the launch of the Ethernet Alliance’s own 400 GbE Subcommittee.

Ethernet is in production today from multiple vendors at 40GbE and supports all storage protocols, including FCoE, at those speeds.   Market forecasters expect the first 100GbE adapters to appear in 2015.   Obviously, it is too early to forecast when 400GbE will arrive, but the train is assuredly in motion.  And support for all the key storage protocols we see today on 10GbE and 40GbE will naturally extend to 100GbE and 400GbE.   Jim O’Reilly makes similar points in his recent Information Week article, “Ethernet: The New Storage Area Network“ where he argues, “Ethernet wins on schedule, cost, and performance.”

Beyond raw transport speed, the rich Ethernet infrastructure offers techniques to catapult your performance even beyond the fastest single-pipe speed.   The Ethernet world has established techniques for what is alternately referred to as link aggregation, channel bonding, or teaming.   The levels available are determined by the capabilities provided in system software and what switch vendors will support.   And those capabilities, in turn, are determined by what they respectively see as market demand.   VMware, for example, today will let you bond eight 10GbE channels into a single 80GbE pipe.   And that’s today with mainstream 10GbE technology.

Ethernet will continue to evolve in many different ways to support the needs of the industry.   Serving as a backbone for all storage networking traffic is just one of many such roles for Ethernet.   In fact, precisely because of the increasing breadth of usage models Ethernet supports, it will also continue to offer cost advantages.   The argument here is a very simple volume argument:

Total Server-class Adapter and LOM Market Ports

crehan-relentless-ethernet-420

Enough said, except to also note that volume is what funds speed roadmaps.

 

 

Use Cases for iSCSI and FCoE – Your Questions Answered

Jeff Asher Leave a comment

We had a tremendous response to our recent Webcast “Use Cases for iSCSI and FCoE – Where Each Makes Sense.” We had a lot of questions that we didn’t have time to address, so here are answers to them all. If you think of additional questions, please feel free to comment on this blog.

Q. You stated that FCoE requires End to End DCB connectivity.   That is not entirely true if you have native Fibre Channel storage.  

Once native FC is added, it is a hybrid FCoE/native FC network, not a simple FCoE network.   To be clearer I could’ve stated that for FCoE all Ethernet links traversed must be DCB enabled.

Q. Any impact on the protocol choice if you bring SDN solutions with overlay networks using VXLAN or NVGRE within virtual switching in hypervisors into the picture?

An excellent question, but complicated enough that it probably deserves a discussion on its own.   Overlay networks encapsulate Ethernet frames into routable packets.   On a view of strict adherence to ISO ordering, that means L2 constructs like Data Center Bridging become “invisible” until decap.   You lose the “lossless,” low-latency that FCoE expects and iSCSI may be taking advantage of, depending on your implementation.   That doesn’t really favor one protocol over the other, but FCoE may lose advantages it has over iSCSI when confined to a single L2 subnet.   But, unfortunately, the real answer to your question requires that you investigate in detail how the system software you are using handles encapsulated storage packets for both block storage protocols.   Microsoft’s Hyper-V is different from VMware’s vSphere, and each flavor of SDN could be different as well.   Proceed with caution.

Q. Have you heard of any enterprise customers who are interested in NIC Partitioning to separate iSCSI, FCoE, and typical network traffic?   If so, can you provide information about those customers’ use cases?

We have not come across many customers that are interested in large-scale deployments yet.

Q. What are the use cases for using standalone FCoE switches in SAN keeping aside Cisco UCS and Blade Servers?

There are two ways to look at this:

1) To use FCoE as an end-to-end (Initiating server to target storage array) solution instead of, or to replace, Fibre Channel. Although, not very prevalent to date, the reason this option is  chosen is to create a single converged LAN/SAN network that essentially retains the native FC constructs. The potential benefit would be in reduction in the amount of equipment required and the resources needed to deploy and administer two separate networks. This can be done in a phased approach, that uses multiprotocol switches, able to be used as Ethernet, FC or both on every port.   This will provide future proofing, reduced qualification costs, and lower OPEX by no longer requiring the purchase of multiple switches of different protocols.

2) To continue the use of FC for connectivity from the Top of Rack switch to the storage arrays, but use FCoE connectivity for server access. This is much more prevalent, and even when deployed outside of the Cisco UCS blade servers, is used to increase flexibility in highly virtualized server environments or multi-tenancy, where workloads/VMs from the same physical servers need to connect to different storage types.

Q. How do iSCSI and FCoE switches handle redundancy?   With FC, it is a best practice to implement dual fabrics with each storage system and server with paths down each.

Physical topology can be identical.   A storage system has one set of targets (either IP addresses or FCoE targets) on one switch and other targets on the other switch.   The initiators are configured to see any targets available on that leg.

To prevent Ethernet broadcast storms, technologies like per VLAN Spanning Tree and link aggregation are used.   TRILL can also be used.   For more details, I recommend reading this blog post by J Metz of Cisco.   http://blogs.cisco.com/datacenter/understanding-fcoe-and-trill-the-easy-way/

Q. Doesn’t increasing CPU mean software processing for FCoE and iSCSI at both endpoints can reduce costs considerably (i.e. no full HBA functionality needed at the endpoints)?

Absolutely.   If you have CPU cycles to spare at both endpoints, there is no reason to take on the extra cost of offload.   However, remember the principle behind Moore’s law also works on things like network adapters and HBAs.   It isn’t unreasonable to think that full offload capabilities will be included by default in a few years as technology progresses.   And even if they aren’t, the actual application of Moore’s law will push the difference in CPU utilization to be trivial.

Q. How do large data centers configure and manage iSCSI?   Is it by configuring the initiators and targets? My understanding is that most installations don’t use iSNS.   Is this true?

It is true that most implementations of iSCSI don’t use iSNS.   iSCSI initiators are simply configured with the target address by the administrator.   In the FC world, SNS is simply there, but the iSCSI equivalent, iSNS, has always been optional.   (SNS stands for Simple Name Service.   It is a service that helps initiators find targets.)

Q. I have been doing a lot of testing to compare iSCSI to FC and noticed that as we move from traditional storage to SSD-based storage the IOPS increase faster for FCoE. For example, 18K+ for FCoE vs. 12K for iSCSI. Have you seen similar results?

I have seen some similar results. However, I’ve also seen some that don’t necessarily line up with that.   I haven’t had the time to research this topic.   Sounds like a good topic for a future post.

Q. Do you have any information about the number of customers who use FCoE Boot and iSCSI Boot?

Unfortunately I don’t.   I do have anecdotal evidence to support customers using full-offload are more likely to boot from SAN.   Since more full-offload FCoE adapters are in use that full-offload iSCSI adapters today, it makes sense that more are booting over FCoE than iSCSI, but again, I don’t have any evidence to support that.

Q. What about iSCSI over RoCE?

There are three network/fabric technologies that use RDMA: InfiniBand, iWARP, and RoCE.  You can run iSCSI over any of these using the open-source iSER code supported by the Open Fabrics Alliance (https://www.openfabrics.org ).  iSER has been written to OFA’s “verbs” for RDMA (rather than to the more familiar “sockets).   However, note that of these three underlying transports, only iWARP is truly routable in general.   So technically you could implement iSER on InfiniBand or RoCE but it may not do for you what you expect iSCSI to do for you, i.e., go anywhere the internet goes.

Q. How does FCIP compare with iSCSI for long distance requirements?

FC networks rely on guaranteed packet delivery to deliver low latency, predictable performance. IP networks are a best effort network allowing for dropped packets with transmission retries. Given the possibility of latency loss, FCIP has experienced limited adoption. Useful where required. But, typically not a core part of infrastructure. If cost is a concern and long distance is required as part of the solution, then iSCSI is the better choice as it designed to allow for lossy networks.  

Q. Slide 22 – Was that hardware based iSCSI or software based iSCSI?

What was shown in the chart was software-based iSCSI, however you would see similar results with hardware-based iSCSI.

Q. What about FC vs FCoE performance? Any numbers?

Both Fibre Channel and FCoE can achieve line rate.   Here’s an example of testing Yahoo! did on an 8Gb FC HBA and a 10 GbE CNA that showed exactly that result: http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/network-adapters/10-gigabit-network-adapters/10-gbe-ethernet-yahoo-case-study.html .   So as Fibre Channel moves to 16 Gbps, it will outperform a 10GbE CNA, at least for peak performance.   However, the tables turn with a 40 GbE CNA, several of which are in production now.

Q. Do you see SR-IOV used currently or in the future to separate FCoE or iSCSI from standard LAN traffic?

So far we have seen that with the exception of a few operating systems (e.g., AIX), SR-IOV support today is network only.   Additionally, most customers want guaranteed bandwidth for storage and they wouldn’t be willing to run it on the same port as heavy NIC traffic.

Q. Are you aware of any FCoE targets for Windows?

I’m not aware of any right now.

Q. What is the max IOPS (at 4K) you can push thru 10G FCoE and iSCSI? Max latency (at 512 bytes)?

Latency is not determined by the pipe.

Q. Does FCoE really require a CNA? What about software only FCoE drivers?

Open FCoE does exist, but most FCoE implementations today use CNAs.   I do expect the adoption of FCoE software solutions to increase fairly substantially.   A lot of it comes down to the choice of booting via FCoE or another method.

Q. Do you think that the difference in FCoE/iSCSI usage for different App tiers can be related to the performance of the protocols?

Objectively, no.   Either protocol implemented can be configured to hit or exceed a performance number.   In my opinion, market perception of the protocols has more to do with the tier assignment than anything technical.

Q. Doesn’t 32 GbFC make it competitive with 40GbE FCoE?

From a purely technical perspective it helps, but FCoE is often deployed to reduce costs by simplifying cabling and switching by converging IP and storage onto the same fabric.   32Gb FC is slower than 40Gb and does nothing to reduce costs.   Unless 32Gb FC is significantly less expensive than 40 Gb Ethernet on a per port basis, market forces are going to push towards Ethernet.   There are still plenty of cases where organizations may deploy 32Gb FC instead of FCoE, but again, those criteria will mostly be non-technical.

Thanks to all my SNIA-ESF colleagues and Dell’Oro Group for helping me with these answers. If you missed the original Webcast, you can watch it on-demand here. You can also download a copy of the slides.

Why the FCoE – iSCSI Debate Continues

Jeff Asher Leave a comment

Why the FCoE – iSCSI Debate Continues

This is my first blog post for SNIA-ESF.  As a Principal Storage Architect, I have been doing extensive research on the factors that are driving FCoE vs. iSCSI choices over the last several years. The more I dive into the topic, the more intriguing the debate becomes. In fact, this blog is a preview of an upcoming white paper I’m writing and a Webcast SNIA is hosting on February 18th. If you agree this debate is interesting, I encourage you to attend. Details on the Webcast are at the end of this post.

A Look Back at FCoE and iSCSI History

There are two entrenched standards for block storage protocols over Ethernet networks.   FCoE was ratified in 2009, while iSCSI was ratified in 2004.   Of course, various vendors and early adopters supported these protocols before ratification, so the history of these protocols is a couple of years longer than it looks, respectively.   While iSCSI simply encapsulates the SCSI protocol in IP, FCoE operates lower in the network stack and to do so required many enhancements to Ethernet.   While iSCSI runs on any IP network (mostly Ethernet these days), FCoE requires Data Center Bridging and Converged Network Adapters all running at 10 Gbps or faster.

All of the Data Center Bridging enhancements that make FCoE possible, like lossless Ethernet, benefit all of the protocols using Ethernet as the transport protocol.   DCB doesn’t just make FCoE possible, but it improves iSCSI at the same time   (see the SNIA-ESF blog, How DCB Makes iSCSI Better). So given that modern servers, networks, and storage may all be connected by hardware capable of running FCoE, that same network is also able to run iSCSI, as well as other network traffic.   Nothing precludes them from running simultaneously on the same network either.   The leading storage vendors that offer both FCoE and iSCSI target systems allow administrators to present the same LUN over either protocol with little effort, so a transition from one protocol to the other is not difficult.

Strengths and Weaknesses

So which network protocol is the right choice?

Each protocol has strengths and weaknesses when judged relative to each other.   FCoE has higher throughput at lower host CPU utilization than iSCSI and FCoE doesn’t have to process the TCP/IP stack as iSCSI does. iSCSI is relatively simple to setup and troubleshoot when compared to FCoE because zoning is not a factor and IP connectivity (although not optimized for storage traffic) is likely in place already.  Also, while FCoE has a comprehensive set of existing tools available to ease troubleshooting, there aren’t as many qualified people to use them in most enterprises.   Ease of use, plus the ability to use low cost NICs and switches, gives iSCSI a cost advantage.   (However, if you check out our SNIA-ESF webcast, “How VN2VN Will Help Accelerate Adoption of FCoE,” you’ll hear about new technologies that reduce the costs of deploying FCoE.) FC, and by extension FCoE, are perceived to be enterprise-grade, suitable for all workloads; and while iSCSI is being widely adopted at the enterprise level, it is still perceived by some not to be ready for Tier-1 applications.   The graph below is excerpted from the report “Intel 10GbE Adapter Performance Evaluation” prepared by Demartek for Intel in September 2010.   This data is consistent with the rest of the report findings and is only intended to be representative of the results from comparative iSCSI and FCoE testing.   The report is interesting reading and I recommend looking at it for more information. This graph shows IOPS and CPU utilization for JetStress tests running against NetApp storage over multi-path iSCSI and FCoE.   Note that latencies were all similar and running the tests against EMC storage showed similar results.

FCoE-iSCSI_Data

Many other factors must be considered, but according to industry pundits- as well as my own personal experience – in the majority of cases either protocol is adequate for the task at hand, and that is to effectively transfer block data across an Ethernet network.

Maximizing Throughput

The reality is, most servers, applications, and storage arrays simply won’t take advantage of FCoE’s superior performance or any storage protocol running over 10GbE.   iSCSI and NAS protocols are very fast and are typically sufficient to meet most application requirements.   But this is not meant to be a SAN vs NAS post – besides years of history, thousands of happy end users, and billions of continued investment show that both work well enough to meet most business needs.   The commonly deployed storage systems and hosts are simply not configured with enough hardware to saturate multiple 10 gigabit network links.   While this is rare today, it is going to become more common to see systems capable of saturating 10GbE pipes in the near future, especially as flash memory, either in all-flash arrays or tiered storage systems, find more application.   (Hear more on the impact of flash in our SNIA-ESF webcast, “Flash – Plan for the Disruption“). At least as it relates to spinning media disk systems – network bandwidth increases faster than storage system throughput can keep up.   So consider the storage system to be the bottleneck or limiting factor when evaluating storage network performance.   After all, in most data center environments, the ratio of servers and applications to storage systems is high. So, it’s reasonable to expect the storage system to be the bottleneck.   The absolute throughput of FCoE and iSCSI, when pushing a storage system to its limits, is not sufficient alone to be used as the sole basis for the decision between the two protocols except, for a few edge cases.   Bottom line: Whether the storage system is the bottleneck or the network is the bottleneck the performance relationship between FCoE and iSCSI does not change.

These edge cases tend to be extremely IO intensive database workloads and big data applications, such as Hadoop.   Citing the graph above, FCoE is about 15-20% faster on identical hardware than iSCSI.   Granted this is a single graph of a single test, but the data is consistent across tests performed by IBM using Emulex network interfaces.   If absolute throughput and efficiency (both network and CPU) are the only criteria when deciding between block protocols, FCoE looks like the choice.   Since these cases are rare – because complexity, supportability, and even politics are almost always considered – the decision is not so obvious.   Again, beyond the scope of this article, NAS protocols should be considered when determining the proper protocol for an application also.

Is There a Clear Winner?

While FCoE can claim technical superiority, iSCSI has the edge in cost and supportability.   The number and range of systems supporting iSCSI connectivity is greater, particularly at the entry level.   What’s more, the availability of people that can troubleshoot end-to-end connectivity for iSCSI is also much greater.   (The “ping” command diagnoses most iSCSI connectivity problems.)   Also, do a resume search on Monster or LinkedIn and the number of people that can configure VLANs dwarfs the number that can properly zone a Fibre Channel network.   Greater familiarity reduces the support and operating cost of iSCSI.

IDC predicts that FCoE revenue will ramp very quickly through 2016. (If available to you, see the IDC Worldwide Enterprise Storage Systems 2012-2016 Forecast Update.)   As customers decide to transition existing Fibre Channel networks to an Ethernet infrastructure, deploying FCoE would be a comfortable choice due to existing IT expertise and functional expectations of the Fibre Channel protocol.

Both iSCSI and FCoE are capable storage protocols and choosing one over the other will likely be dependent upon budget, IT skill set, and application requirements

Don’t forget to join us on Feb. 18th

Again, I encourage you to attend our February 18th Webcast, “Use Cases for iSCSI and FCoE –Where Each Makes Sense.”   Analysts from Dell’Oro Group will share their latest market research on this topic and I’ll dive into use cases for both iSCSI and FCoE. It’s a live event, so please come with your toughest questions. I hope you’ll join us!

Update:

 

2013 in Review and the Outlook for 2014 – A SNIA ESF Perspective

Jason Blosil Leave a comment

Technology continues to advance rapidly. Making sense of it all can be a challenge. At the SNIA Ethernet Storage Forum, we focus on storage technologies and solutions enabled by and associated with Ethernet Networks. Last year, we modified the charters of our two Special Interest Groups (SIG) to address topics about file protocols and storage over Ethernet. The File Protocols SIG includes the prior focus on Network File System (NFS) related topics and adds discussions around Server Message Block (SMB / CIFS). We had our first webcast last November on the topic of SMB 3.0 and it was our best attended webcast ever. The Storage over Ethernet SIG focuses on general Ethernet storage topics as well as more information about technologies like FCoE, iSCSI, Data Center Bridging, and virtual networking for storage. I encourage you to check out other articles on these hot topics in this SNIAESF blog to hear from our member experts as well as guest posts from leading analysts.

2013 was a busy year and we are already kickin’ it in 2014. This should be an exciting year in IT. Data storage continues to be a hot sector especially in the areas of All-Flash and Hybrid arrays. This year, we will expect to see new standards coming out of the T11 committee for Fibre Channel and possibly FCoE as well as progress in high speed Ethernet networks. Lower cost network interconnects will facilitate adoption of high speed networks in the small to midsize business segment. And a new conversation around “Software Defined…” should push a lot of ink in trade rags and other news sources. Oh, and don’t forget about the “Internet of Things”, mobile solutions, and all things Cloud.

The ESF will be addressing the impact on Ethernet storage solutions from these hot technologies. Next month, on February 18th, experts from the ESF, along with industry analysts from Dell’Oro Group will speak to the benefits and best practices of deploying FCoE and iSCSI storage protocols. This presentation “Use Cases for iSCSI and Fibre Channel: Where Each Makes Sense” will be part of an upcoming BrightTalk Summit on Storage Networking. I encourage you to register for this session. Additionally, we will be publishing a couple of white papers on file-based storage and a review of FCoE and iSCSI in storage applications.

Finally, SNIA will be kicking off its first year of the new user conference, Data Storage Innovation Conference. This will be one of the few storage focused user conferences in the market and should be quite interesting.

We’re excited about our growing membership and our plans for 2014. Our goal is to advance  application of innovative technologies and we encourage you to send us mail or comment below with topics that are of interest to you.

Here’s to an exciting 2014!

Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE): Hype vs. Reality

Casey Quillin Sameh Boujelbene Leave a comment

It’s been a bit of a bumpy ride for FCoE, which started out with more promise than it was able to deliver. In theory, the benefits of a single converged LAN/SAN network are fairly easy to see. The problem was, as is often the case with new technology, that most of the theoretical benefit was not available on the initial product release. The idea that storage traffic was no longer confined to expensive SANs, but instead could run on the more commoditized and easier-to-administer IP equipment was intriguing, however, new 10 Gbps Enhanced Ethernet switches were not exactly inexpensive with few products supporting FCoE initially, and those that did, did not play nicely with products from other vendors.

Keeping FCoE “On the Single-Hop”?

The adoption of FCoE to date has been almost exclusively “single-hop”, meaning that FCoE is being deployed to provide connectivity between the server and the Top of Rack switch. Consequently, traffic continues to be broken out one way for IP, and another way for FC. Breaking out the traffic makes sense—by consolidating network adapters and cables, it adds value on the server access side.

A significant portion of FCoE switch ports come from Cisco’s UCS platform, which runs FCoE inside the chassis. In terms of a complete end-to-end FCoE solution, there continues to be very little multi-hop FCoE happening, or ports shipping on storage arrays.

In addition, FCoE connections are more prevalent on blade servers than on stand-alone servers for various reasons.

  • First, blades are used more in a virtualized environment where different types of traffic can travel on the same link.
  • Second, the migration to 10 Gbps has been very slow so far on stand-alone servers; about 80% of these servers are actually still connected with 1 Gbps, which cannot support FCoE.

What portion of FCoE-enabled server ports are actually running storage traffic?

FCoE-enabled ports comprise about a third of total 10 Gbps controller and adapter ports shipped on servers. However, we would like to bring to readers’ attention the wide difference between the portion of 10 Gbps ports that is FCoE-enabled and the portion that is actually running storage traffic. We currently believe less than a third of the FCoE-enabled ports are being used to carry storage traffic. That’s because the FCoE port, in many cases, is provided by default with the server. That’s the case with HP blade servers as well as Cisco’s UCS servers, which together are responsible for around 80% of the FCoE-enabled ports. We believe, however, that in the event that users buy separate adapters they will most likely use that adapter to run storage traffic—but they will need to pay an additional premium for this – about 50% to 100% – for the FCoE license.

The Outlook

That said, whether FCoE-enabled ports are used to carry storage traffic or not, we believe they are being introduced at the expense of some FC adapters. If users deploy a server with an FCoE-enabled port, they most likely will not buy a FC adapter to carry storage traffic. Additionally, as Ethernet speeds reach 40 Gbps, the differential over FC will be too great and FC will be less likely to keep pace.

About the Authors

Casey Quillin is a  Senior Analyst, Storage Area Network & Data Center Appliance Market Research with the Dell’Oro Group

Sameh Boujelbene is a  Senior Analyst, Server and Controller & Adapter Market Research with the Dell’Oro Group

Software Defined Networks for SANs?

David Fair Leave a comment

Previously, I’ve blogged about the VN2VN (virtual node to virtual node) technology coming with the new T11-FC-BB6 specification. In a nutshell, VN2VN enables an “all Ethernet” FCoE network, eliminating the requirement for an expensive Fibre Channel Forwarding (FCF) enabled switch. VN2VN dramatically lowers the barrier of entry for deploying FCoE. Host software is available to support VN2VN, but so far only one major SAN vendor supports VN2VN today. The ecosystem is coming, but are there more immediate alternatives for deploying FCoE without an FCF-enabled switch or VN2VN-enabled target SANs? The answer is that full FC-BB5 FCF services could be provided today using Software Defined Networking (SDN) in conjunction with standard DCB-enabled switches by essentially implementing those services in host-based software running in a virtual machine on the network. This would be an alternative “all Ethernet” storage network supporting Fibre Channel protocols. Just such an approach was presented at SNIA’s Storage Developers Conference 2013 in a presentation entitled, “Software-Defined Network Technology and the Future of Storage,” Stuart Berman, Chief Executive Officer, Jeda Networks. (Note, of course neither approach is relevant to SAN networks using Fibre Channel HBAs, cables, and switches.)

Interest in SDN is spreading like wildfire. Several pioneering companies have released solutions for at least parts of the SDN puzzle, but kerosene hit the wildfire with the $1B acquisition of Nicira by VMware. Now a flood of companies are pursuing an SDN approach to everything from wide area networks to firewalls to wireless networks. Applying SDN technology to storage, or more specifically to Storage Area Networks, is an interesting next step. See Jason Blosil’s blog below, “Ethernet is the right fit for the Software Defined Data Center.”

To review, an SDN abstracts the network switch control plane from the physical hardware. This abstraction is implemented by a software controller, which can be a virtual appliance or virtual machine hosted in a virtualized environment, e.g., a VMware ESXi host. The benefits are many; the abstraction is often behaviorally consistent with the network being virtualized but simpler to manipulate and manage for a user. The SDN controller can automate the numerous configuration steps needed to set up a network, lowering the amount of touch points required by a network engineer. The SDN controller is also network speed agnostic, i.e., it can operate over a 10Gbps Ethernet fabric and seamlessly transition to operate over a 100Gbps Ethernet fabric. And finally, the SDN controller can be given an unlimited amount of CPU and memory resources in the host virtual server, scaling to a much greater magnitude compared to the control planes in switches that are powered by relatively low powered processors.

So why would you apply SDN to a SAN? One reason is SSD technology; storage arrays based on SSDs move the bandwidth bottleneck for the first time in recent memory into the network. An SSD array can load several 10Gbps links, overwhelming many 10G Ethernet fabrics. Applying a Storage SDN to an Ethernet fabric and removing the tight coupling of speed of the switch with the storage control plane will accelerate adoption of higher speed Ethernet fabrics. This will in turn move the network bandwidth bottleneck back into the storage array, where it belongs.

Another reason to apply SDN to Storage Networks is to help move certain application workloads into the Cloud. As compute resources increase in speed and consolidate, workloads require deterministic bandwidth, IOPS and/or resiliency metrics which have not been well served by Cloud infrastructures. Storage SDNs would apply enterprise level SAN best practices to the Cloud, enabling the migration of some applications which would increase the revenue opportunities of the Cloud providers. The ability to provide a highly resilient, high performance, SLA-capable Cloud service is a large market opportunity that is not cost available/realizable with today’s technologies.

So how can SDN technology be applied to the SAN? The most viable candidate would be to leverage a Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) network. An FCoE network already converges a high performance SAN with the Ethernet LAN. FCoE is a lightweight and efficient protocol that implements flow control in the switch hardware, as long as the switch supports Data Center Bridging (DCB). There are plenty of standard “physical” DCB-enabled Ethernet switches to choose from, so a Storage SDN would give the network engineer freedom of choice. An FCoE based SDN would create a single unified, converged and abstracted SAN fabric. To create this Storage SDN you would need to extract and abstract the FCoE control plane from the switch removing any dependency of a physical FCF. This would include the critical global SAN services such as the Name Server table, the Zoning table and State Change Notification. Containing the global SAN services, the Storage SDN would also have to communicate with initiators and targets, something an SDN controller does not do. Since FCoE is a network-centric technology, i.e., configuration is performed from the network, a Storage SDN can automate large SAN’s from a single appliance. The Storage SDN should be able to create deterministic, end-to-end Ethernet fabric paths due to the global view of the network that an SDN controller typically has.

A Storage SDN would also be network speed agnostic, since Ethernet switches already support 10Gbps, 40Gbps, and 100Gbps this would enable extremely fast SANs not currently attainable. Imagine the workloads, applications and consolidation of physical infrastructure possible with a 100Gbps Storage SDN SAN all controlled by a software FCoE virtual server connecting thousands of servers with terabytes of SSD storage? SDN technology is bursting with solutions around LAN traffic; now we need to tie in the SAN and keep it as non-proprietary to the hardware as possible.

Q&A Summary from the SNIA-ESF Webcast – “How VN2VN Will Help Accelerate Adoption of FCoE”

David Fair Leave a comment

Our VN2VN Webcast last week was extremely well received. The audience was big and highly engaged. Here is a summary of the questions attendees asked and answers from my colleague, Joe White, and me. If you missed the Webcast, it’s now available on demand.

Question #1:

We are an extremely large FC shop with well over 50K native FC ports. We are looking to bridge this to the FCoE environment for the future. What does VN2VN buy the larger company? Seems like SMB is a much better target for this.

Answer #1: It’s true that for large port count SAN deployments VN2VN is not the best choice but the split is not strictly along the SMB/large enterprise lines. Many enterprises have multiple smaller special purpose SANs or satellite sites with small SANs and VN2VN can be a good choice for those parts of a large enterprise. Also, VN2VN can be used in conjunction with VN2VF to provide high-performance local storage, as we described in the webcast.

Question #2: Are there products available today that incorporate VN2VN in switches and storage targets?

Answer #2: Yes. A major storage vendor announced support for VN2VN at Interop Las Vegas 2013. As for switches, any switch supporting Data Center Bridging (DCB) will work. Most, if not all, new datacenter switches support DCB today. Recommended also is support in the switch for FIP Snooping, which is also available today.

Question #3: If we have an iSNS kind of service for VN2VN, do you think VN2VN can scale beyond the current anticipated limit?

Answer #3: That is certainly possible. This sort of central service does not exist today for VN2VN and is not part of the T11 specifications so we are talking in principle here. If you follow SDN (Software Defined Networking) ideas and thinking then having each endpoint configured through interaction with a central service would allow for very large potential scaling. Now the size and bandwidth of the L2 (local Ethernet) domain may restrict you, but fabric and distributed switch implementations with large flat L2 can remove that limitation as well.

Question #4: Since VN2VN uses different FIP messages to do login, a unique FSB implementation must be provided to install ACLs. Have any switch vendors announced support for a VN2VN FSB?

Answer #4: Yes, VN2VN FIP Snooping bridges will exist. It only requires a small addition to the filet/ACL rules on the FSB Ethernet switch to cover VN2VN. Small software changes are needed to cover the slightly different information, but the same logic and interfaces within the switch can be used, and the way the ACLs are programmed are the same.

Question #5: Broadcasts are a classic limiter in Layer 2 Ethernet scalability. VN2VN control is very broadcast intensive, on the default or control plane VLAN. What is the scale of a data center (or at least data center fault containment domain) in which VN2VN would be reliably usable, even assuming an arbitrarily large number of data plane VLANs? Is there a way to isolate the control plane broadcast traffic on a hierarchy of VLANs as well?

Answer #5: VLANs are an integral part of VN2VN within the T11 FC-BB-6 specification. You can configure the endpoints (servers and storage) to do all discovery on a particular VLAN or set of VLANs. You can use VLAN discovery for some endpoints (mostly envisioned as servers) to learn the VLANs on which to do discovery from other endpoints (mostly envisioned as storage). The use of VLANs in this manner will contain the FIP broadcasts to the FCoE dedicated VLANs. VN2VN is envisioned initially as enabling small to medium SANs of about a couple hundred ports although in principle the addressing combined with login controls allows for much larger scaling.

Question #6: Please explain difference between VN2VN and VN2VF

Answer #6: The currently deployed version of FCoE, T11 FC-BB-5, requires that every endpoint, or Enode in FC-speak, connect with the “fabric,” a Fibre Channel Forwarder (FCF) more specifically. That’s VN2VF. What FC-BB-6 adds is the capability for an endpoint to connect directly to other endpoints without an FCF between them. That’s VN2VN.

Question #7: In the context of VN2VN, do you think it places a stronger demand for QCN to be implemented by storage devices now that they are directly (logically) connected end-to-end?

Answer #7: The QCN story is the same for VN2VN, VN2VF, I/O consolidation using an NPIV FCoE-FC gateway, and even high-rate iSCSI. Once the discovery completes and sessions (FLOGI + PLOGI/PRLI) are setup, we are dealing with the inherent traffic pattern of the applications and storage.

Question #8: Your analogy that VN2VN is like private loop is interesting. But it does make VN2VN sound like a backward step – people stopped deploying AL tech years ago (for good reasons of scalability etc.). So isn’t this just a way for vendors to save development effort on writing a full FCF for FCoE switches?

Answer #8: This is a logical private loop with a lossless packet switched network for connectivity. The biggest issue in the past with private or public loop was sharing a single fiber across many devices. The bandwidth demands and latency demands were just too intense for loop to keep up. The idea of many devices addressed in a local manner was actually fairly attractive to some deployments.

Question #9: What is the sweet spot for VN2VN deployment, considering iSCSI allows direct initiator and target connections, and most networks are IP-enabled?

Answer #9: The sweet spot if VN2VN FCoE is SMB or dedicated SAN deployments where FC-like flow control and data flow are needed for up to a couple hundred ports. You could implement using iSCSI with PFC flow control but if TCP/IP is not needed due to PFC lossless priorities — why pay the TCP/IP processing overhead? In addition the FC encapsulation/serializaition and FC exchange protocols and models are preserved if this is important or useful to the applications. The configuration and operations of a local SAN using the two models is comparable.

Question #10: Has iSCSI become irrelevant?

Answer #10: Not at all. iSCSI serves a slightly different purpose from FCoE (including VN2VN). iSCSI allows connection across any IP network, and due to TCP/IP you have an end-to-end lossless in-order delivery of data. The drawback is that for high loss rates, burst drops, heavy congestion the TCP/IP performance will suffer due to congestion avoidance and retransmission timeouts (‘slow starts’). So the choice really depends on the data flow characteristics you are looking for and there is not a one size fits all answer.

Question #11: Where can I watch this Webcast?

Answer #11: The Webcast is available on demand on the SNIA website here.

Question #12: Can I get a copy of these slides?

Answer #12: Yes, the slides are available on the SNIA website here.