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STORAGE NETWORKING

A quick introduction to SANs and Panasas ActivStor

Kevin Haines, eScience Centre, STFC, RAL

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WikiPedia defines a SAN:

A storage area network (SAN) is anarchitecture to attach remote computerstorage devices (such as disk arrays, tapelibraries, and optical jukeboxes) to servers insuch a way that the devices appear as locallyattached to the operating system.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Storage_area_networkhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Storage_area_network

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Its like a LAN...

SAN Topology

Host/HBA 1

Host/HBA 2

Host/HBA 3

Storage

1

SAN Switch

Storage2

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Storage

1

SAN Switch

Storage2

Host/HBA 1

Host/HBA 2

Host/HBA 3

Its like a LAN... it has a switch...

SAN Topology

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Storage

1

SAN Switch

Storage2

Host/HBA 1

Host/HBA 2

Host/HBA 3

Its like a LAN... it has a switch, and network cards.

SAN Topology

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Storage

1

SAN Switch

Storage2

Host/HBA 1

Host/HBA 2

Host/HBA 3

Its like a LAN... it has a switch, and network cards.

SAN Topology

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Its like a LAN...but a little different.

SAN Topology

Storage

1

SAN Switch

Storage2

Host/HBA 1

Host/HBA 2

Host/HBA 3

Fibre Connectors 2/4/8Gb/s

WWNs

Initiators Targets

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Zoning implemented by the switch

Controlling Access

Zone 1 = HBA1 + Storage1

Zone 2 = HBA2 + HBA3 + Storage 2

Storage

1

SAN Switch

Storage2

Host/HBA 1

Host/HBA 2

Host/HBA 3

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LD3

LD2

LUN masking on the storage array

Controlling Access

Zone 1 = HBA1 + Storage1

Zone 2 = HBA2 + HBA3 + Storage 2

Storage

1

SAN Switch

LD1

Host/HBA 1

Host/HBA 2

Host/HBA 3

HBA2

HBA2

HBA3

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LD3

LD2

LUN masking on the storage array

Controlling Access

Zone 1 = HBA1 + Storage1

Zone 2 = HBA2 + HBA3 + Storage 2

Storage

1

LD1

Host/HBA 1

Host/HBA 2

Host/HBA 3

HBA2

HBA2

HBA3SAN Switch

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HOST

Multipath

Increasing Resilience

Storage1

SAN Switch 1HBA 1

SAN Switch 2HBA 2

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Questions about SANs?

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Panasas ActivStor

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Panasas ActivStor

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Panasas ActivStor

Director Blades

Meta-data and volume management services

NFS access gateway

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Panasas ActivStor

Storage Blades

Two disks (up to 2TB per blade)

2xGb/s ethernet (failover mode)

11 per shelf (must be managed by DB)

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Panasas ActivStor Resilience

Data is striped across all Storage Blades (RAID5 or RAID1)

One or more Storage Blades worth of space reserved for failures

System monitoring for pre-emptive actions (Blade Drain)

Two or more Director Blades can provide failover for each other

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Panasas ActivStor Performance

DirectFLOW clients

Available for most major Linux distributions

Directly communicates with Storage Blades

RAID computations performed by client

~5000 supported (12000 option)

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Panasas ActivStor Performance

DirectFLOW clients

Available for most major Linux distributions

Directly communicates with Storage Blades

RAID computations performed by client

~5000 supported (12000 option)

Results show scalable claim is true

RAL: 1.2 GB/s from 22 nodes (2 shelves)

RoadRunner: 60GB/s (103 shelves)