The challenge for developers who work with large volumes of data such as multimedia assets, video game art, and firmware designs, etc., is the ability to get a quick copy of source and build assets. By combining the technologies of Perforce and NetApp, a new Perforce workspace can be created in minutes instead of hours. Perforce in collaboration with NetApp has developed a p4 broker script written in Python that allows users to create workspaces quickly using NetApp FlexClone technology.

1. Accelerating Software Development
with NetApp's P4flex
Bikash Roy Choudhury
Narjit Chadha

2. 2
Agenda
 Introduction
 What is p4flex?
• Components
• Workflows
 Perforce in AWS and Hybrid Cloud Model
 Key Takeaways
 P4flex Demo

3. NetApp is a global provider of software, systems
and services to manage and store data
© 2015 NetApp, Inc. All rights reserved. NetApp Confidential – Limited Use3
Annual Revenue Global Employees Patent Assets
$6.1B 12,000+ 3,200

4. Challenges in Application development
environment
© 2015 NetApp, Inc. All rights reserved. NetApp Confidential – Limited Use4
Managing Risk Speed
Economics Scale

5. Faster TTM Depends on..
Developers Focus on
• Code & Testing (Unit/Smoke tests)
• Maintain Version Control
• Continuous Integration
• Automate as much as possible
Build environments should be
• Faster & Scalable
• Builds can be repeatable and reliable
• Every build should be a release
candidate
Images by xkcd.com

6. The equations gets simpler
Application Development demands in a DevOps practice
Business
Impact
Value
Time
Shorter the Time, higher the Value and more Impact with faster Time to Market (TTM)
= TTM
© 2016 NetApp, Inc. All rights reserved. NetApp Proprietary – Limited Use Only By - Bikash Roy Choudhury
=

7. Automating Developers’ environment with NetApp using
Perforce Helix
Continuous Integration (CI) Environment
P4 Depot
(Source Code)
Main Codebase
Dev.Branch1 Dev.Branch2
Dev.Branch3 Dev.Branch4
Dev.Branch1
C
R
L
T
BUILD
CI TEST
Baseline1
OK
OK
Workspace1
(pre-packaged)
Developer Environment
Snapshot1.1Snapshot
Full Builds
(Docker Images)
• Risk Mitigation
• Drive Storage Cost down
• Instantaneous Workspace Creation
QA/Staging Deploy
T
R
C
Snapshot.1 Snapshot1.2
Dev.Branch1.2
BUILD
OK
Workspace1.2
(pre-packaged)
CI TEST
OK
Baseline1.2
P4 Database
© 2016 NetApp, Inc. All rights reserved. NetApp Proprietary – Limited Use Only By - Bikash Roy Choudhury
P4Flex

8. P4 Flex Team
8
PM Clary
Technical Account
Manager
Lawrence Bunka
Sr. Product Strategy
Manager
Tim Brazil
Performance
Engineer
Paul Allen
Senior Integrations
Engineer
Narjit Chadha
Solutions Architect
Bikash Roy Choudhury
Principal Architect

9. P4 Flex Overview
 What is it?
• P4 flex is an open-source p4broker script which
is shared to the developer community to refine
and customized to their own environment.
• A starting reference

10. P4 Flex Overview
 Support
• Support is through the developer community
forums in which Perforce and NetApp are
members.
• Posted on Perforce Workshop
• Currently only supports Linux and NFS
environments.

11. P4 Flex Components
P4 FLEX:
• broker.cfg
• flex.cfg
• flex.py
P4 Client
p4broker P4D Server
P4 Client
P4 Client

12. Requirements
 In order to be able to utilize P4 Flex the following is
required:
• Python 2.6 or later
• P4 Python 2.6 or later APIs
• NetApp Manageability Software Development Kit (NMSDK) 5.3.x or
later
• NetApp RESTful API services will be available in May 2016.

13. Pre- Requisites
 To use P4 flex, the following are assumed.
• SERVER
- P4D Server is installed and running
- P4Broker installed
- LDAP is running or an existence of user accounts and authentication
management.
- NetApp Cluster Mode Storage Data ONTAP 8.x is used with FlexClone
and NFS license enabled
• CLIENT:
- NFS Client is running on client box
- NetApp volume is mounted on client box
- The "p4 client" is installed.

14. Workflow
 Create a Volume & add content
 Snapshot a Volume
 Cloned by a User
 Clean up

15. Workflow
Volume snapshot 1 snapshot 2 snapshot 3
clone at
snapshot 1
clone at
snapshot 3
Bob
Joe
User’s clones created at snapshot on the Volume

16. Workflow
1. Create a Volume, add content
p4 flex volume -s 1G projVolume
-Create and Mount the volume at:
/p4/projVolume
2. Snapshot the volume
p4 volumes
p4 flex snapshot -VprojVolume snap1
- Creates a snapshot and hidden Perforce workspace
to manage the have list.

17. Workflow
3. Clone the volume
p4 volumes
p4 snapshots
p4 flex clone -VprojACE -Ssnap1 myClone
-Mounts the clone & places P4CONFIG
/p4/myClone
.p4config

18. Workflow
 Clean up Clones
p4 clones
p4 clone -d myClone
 Clean up Volumes
p4 volumes
p4 volume -d projACE
(snapshots automatically removed)

19. Perforce Helix in AWS in a Hybrid Cloud Model
SnapMirror over
VPN / MPLS
Metadata
Direct
Connect
Source
Code
Metadata
Source
Code
Main Datacenter
Scalability and Flexibility with NetApp Private Storage (NPS)
• Provision on demand resources for bursty workloads
• Language and development tools agnostic
• Complete data control and location aware
• No lock-in with any Service provider or public cloud
• Distributed pre-build/build code for QA and system tests
NetApp Private Storage (NPS)
p4 volumes in (Hybrid) Cloud
Perforce in Public Cloud
DevOps in Datacenter
© 2016 NetApp, Inc. All rights reserved. NetApp Proprietary – Limited Use Only By - Bikash Roy Choudhury
Pre-Builds
Metadata
Source
Code
P4 Server
License Server

20. 20
P4 Flex Demonstration

21. Developer’s advantage using NetApp technology
Claim to fame
© 2016 NetApp, Inc. All rights reserved. --- NETAPP CONFIDENTIAL ---21
Scale: 2units=1 minute
User WorkSpace CreationTime
72mins
Traditional way using “rsync” takes >70minutes
Optimized way using NetApp takes <1 min.
Scale: 1unit = 1hour
Build completion Time
Traditional Build times
Build times using NetApp reduced by 50%
60TB
3TB
Storage Space Efficiency
during Code Development,
Unit tests and builds
Other Storage
Up to 40x Storage space reduction using NetApp
24hrs

22. Thank you!
bikash@netapp.com
narjit@netapp.com
Demo: https://forums.netapp.com/docs/DOC-29884