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NIIF Storage Services

NIIF Storage Services. Collaboration on Storage Services. Peter Stefan, NIIF stefan@niif.hu 29 June, 2 00 7, Amsterdam , The Netherlands. Agenda. Objective of our storage development Brief NIIF introduction Driving force of storage development: users need it! Storage building blocks: FC,

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NIIF Storage Services

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  1. NIIF Storage Services Collaboration on Storage Services Peter Stefan, NIIF stefan@niif.hu 29 June, 2007, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

  2. Agenda • Objective of our storage development • Brief NIIF introduction • Driving force of storage development: users need it! • Storage building blocks: • FC, • AoE, • „Design and develop your own” box. • The two storage node solutions at NIIF • How can users access storage volumes? • Storage node integration • Conclusions NIIF– http://www.niif.hu

  3. Who we are? • NIIF is the Hungarian NREN, connecting about 450 academic institutions and 600000 users. • Our service portfolio is as follows: • backbone data network (HBONE), • videoconferencing services, • web, mail, AAI, FTP, DNS services, • supercomputers, grids, and • data storage facilities. • Financed mostly by the Hungarian Ministry of Economics and Transportation. NIIF– http://www.niif.hu

  4. Who we are? NIIF– http://www.niif.hu

  5. Why large storage volumes? • There is a continuous need for large volume, moderate speed and high availability storage solutions. • Key usage areas that we know about are: • library archives, • on-line network monitoring (netflow), • videoconferencing, • grids, • off-site back up of large-volume servers. NIIF– http://www.niif.hu

  6. Bulding blocks - FC • Fibre Channel (FC) SAN/NAS solutions dominate the market. • Experience with StorageTek (15000 USD/TB), T3, CX500 (6000 USD/TB), SFS (45000 USD/TB). • Generic experience: • FC works well  • high price/{capacity,performance} figures  • rather large operational costs (disk replacement, support)  • not optimal choice for disk-based back ups.  NIIF– http://www.niif.hu

  7. Bulding blocks - AoE • Interesting idea: use only Ethernet as storage interconnection! • ATA-over-Ethernet protocol by Coraid Inc. • Key idea: ATA commands are wrapped into Ethernet frames; the AoE driver strips Ethernet frames, then extracts ATA commands and conveys them as block devices. NIIF– http://www.niif.hu

  8. Bulding blocks - AoE • Two conceptually different AoE implementations: • Parallel ATA (older, 5 MB/s), • Serial ATA (newer, 60 MB/s). • Generic experience with the SATA boxes: • moderate performance figures in certain cases  • very good price/performance value (1200 USD/TB), and prices keep dropping  • low operational costs (standard disks, very simple architecture)  • to build a PByte-scale system further virtualization layer is required  NIIF– http://www.niif.hu

  9. „Design and develop your own box” • Use a multi-disk PC chassis with Linux! • SATA or SAS disks, • standard RAID cards, • PCI-express bus system, • iSCSI and AoE protocols, • universal storage box: GE, Infiniband, 10 GE. • Generic experience with ours: • modular  • can be driven up to the hardware boundaries  • our record is: 700 MB/s using RAID0 and 450 MB/s using RAID10  • no vendor support  NIIF– http://www.niif.hu

  10. Node solution 1 - PATA storage • The purpose is to provide a single, large disk volume for grid users. • Furbrished from 7 PATA boxes, 2 Cisco Catalyst switches, and 2 64-bit servers. • Involves 7x10x400 MBs of disks. Sum: 28 TBs. • Two storage processors are in master-slave layout. • Volumes are organized in ten vertical RAID6 arrays concatenated by LVS. This provides box redundancy. • Available via grid middleware and SCP-only. • Weak points: low IO (50-55 MB/s) , lack of switch-level redundancy , not scalable . NIIF– http://www.niif.hu

  11. Node solution 1 - PATA storage NIIF– http://www.niif.hu

  12. Node solution 2 - SATA storage • The purpose is to provide a single, large disk volume that can be split to smaller, yet scalable units for generic usage. • Made up of 4 SATA boxes, 2 Cisco Catalyst GE switches, and 2 servers. • GE is used as storage interconnection. • Involves 4x15x500 GBs of disks. Sum: 30 TBs. • Two Linux storage processors with HA. • Volumes are organized in 15 vertical RAID5 arrays concatenated by LVS. • RAID + volume management is performed on storage proeccors. NIIF– http://www.niif.hu

  13. Node solution 2 - SATA storage • Full box-, switch-, and storage processor-level redundancy . • Available via iSCSI for local users . • Has virtualization capability, i.e. any boxes and any storage protocols can be used (FC, AoE, iSCSI, Infiniband, Tape) . • Can be used for building up hierarchical storage systems . • Not-yet FC-equivalent in terms of e.g. cache coherency . • IO is about 100-120 MB/s. NIIF– http://www.niif.hu

  14. Solution #2 - SATA storage NIIF– http://www.niif.hu

  15. Solution #2 - SATA storage NIIF– http://www.niif.hu

  16. How to give access to users? • Storage nodes can provide block-level, file-level, and application-level access to the large disk volumes. • Block-level: • AoE, • iSCSI (particularly kind to NRENs). • File-level: • NFS, SMBFS, • Cluster file systems (GFS, Lustre). • Application-level: • SSH, SCP, • storage-capable grid middleware. NIIF– http://www.niif.hu

  17. Storage node integration • Current status: 2 nodes, lot of plans for the future. • Create multiple redundant storage nodes at different parts of our network, i.e. at regional centers, or at large customers. • Integrate them at application level, by using storage management software, like SRM, or Grid Underground (GUG) storage management modules. • The target system is a geographically distributed storage system providing distributed, replicated, yet safely protected data sets, and standard interfaces. • First inter-node service: distributed and encrypted backup service. NIIF– http://www.niif.hu

  18. Conclusions • During our storage development activities we revealed that building cost-efficient, reasonable-speed and reliable storage nodes is possible based on cheap building blocks ands free software. • To handle complexity we believe that application-integrated hierarchical storage systems are needed. • NRENs can play integrating role due to their positions. • QoS, monitoring and, in general, strict operational disciplines are necessary compared to, say, grid systems. • There is still a lot to develop: management, advanced monitoring, cache coherency. NIIF– http://www.niif.hu

  19. Thanks & Questions ? stefan@niif.hu http://www.niif.hu

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