Ditching Fibre Channel & SCSI: Saying hast la vista to your vendors and "ooh la la" to open storage.

Photo Credit: http://www.nea.com/UploadedImages/ImageGallery/old%20computer%20image.jpg Ditching Fibre Channel & SCSI: Saying hasta la vista to your vendors and “ooh la la” to open storage. ©2008 DigiTar, All Rights Reserved

A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away... • what is ﬁbre channel? Fibre Channel • is ethernet + TCP/IP different than ﬁbre channel? Photo Credit: http://thebadplus.typepad.com/photos/uncategorized/deathstar_2.jpg • storage networking: just a mechanism for SCSI access over a network ©2008 DigiTar, All Rights Reserved

More ﬂexible than Gumby on a hot plate... • why use a commodity storage stack? • block or ﬁle access when it suits you • same commodity troubleshooting tools Photo Credit: http://wallpapers.jurko.net/widescreen/uploads/wallpaper_1439.jpg • inspection at any OSI layer • SAN access on a whim ©2008 DigiTar, All Rights Reserved

Ethernet Everywhere? • performance: FC vs. Ethernet • latency • maximum segment sizes • lossless transmission • loop elimination latency (μs) ethernet is rarely the wrong choice ©2008 DigiTar, All Rights Reserved

We don’t need no stinkin’ revolutions... • high performance = high RPMs! nope. • IOPs not RPMs Photo Credit: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Francisco_Villa.gif • 37% more IOPs with SATA ©2008 DigiTar, All Rights Reserved

“Lies, damn lies, and enterprise drives.” • greater reliability costs more right? • wrong. you don’t necessarily get what you pay for: Photo Credit: http://www.pcmag.com/image_popup/0,1871,iid=124480,00.asp • New data on “enterprise” drive reliability • “Failure Trends in a Large Disk Drive Population” Google - http://labs.google.com/papers/disk_failures.pdf • “Disk Failures in the Real World: What Does an MTTF of 1,000,000 Hours Mean to You?” Carnegie Mellon University http://www.usenix.org/events/fast07/tech/schroeder/schroeder.pdf ©2008 DigiTar, All Rights Reserved

Sharing the (commodity) love... • vendors love commodity hardware NetApp 6070 SunFire X4500 2x 2.8GHz Dual-Core 4x 2.6GHz Opteron 852 Opteron 290 32GB RAM 16GB RAM 48x 500GB 7200 RPM Disks Disk trays sold separately (24TB) Cost: $151,464 Cost: $34,995 • consider cheaper, modular arrays for NVRAM ©2008 DigiTar, All Rights Reserved

Redundant controllers, hitless upgrades and other HA myths... • high availability truths • redundant controllers fail • hitless upgrades are miracles... and happen just about as often Photo Credit: http://images.buycostumes.com/mgen/merchandiser/11025.jpg • rock-solid availability • redundant arrays (not controllers) • application level failover ©2008 DigiTar, All Rights Reserved

The missing link. • cheap disk, commodity hardware, gig ethernet... we’re missing something... • a storage OS: Linux or OpenSolaris • storage on Linux can be hazardous to your health • OpenSolaris • rock-solid storage subsystem • ZFS • iSCSI, NFSv3/v4, CIFS (FC target soon!) • NTFS ACLs (dual-directory support) ©2008 DigiTar, All Rights Reserved

Open Storage: The DigiTar Way • how does DigiTar use ZFS, Solaris and commodity hardware today? + • how are the beneﬁts realized in DigiTar’s infrastructure? • cost analysis/savings DigiTar has experienced as a result ©2008 DigiTar, All Rights Reserved

Making all the pieces ﬁt... • enhance your infrastructure uniquely Photo Credit: http://www.exhibitoronline.com/exhibitormagazine/images/october_2006/everythingmatters/jenga_medium.jpg • favor iSCSI & NAS for new deployments • utilize SATA • OpenSolaris: vendor licensing judo ©2008 DigiTar, All Rights Reserved

Ditching Fibre Channel & SCSI: Saying hast la vista to your vendors and "ooh la la" to open storage.

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