PAC532 iscsi and NAS in ESX Server 3.0 Andy Banta Senior Storage Engineer VMware October 20th, 2005
Overview What is iscsi? What is NAS? Why are iscsi and NAS Interesting? How VMware is Doing iscsi Implementation Features Configuration How VMware is Doing NAS NFS implementation Features and configuration
What is iscsi? SCSI Basis Initiator Target Transport of SCSI over TCP/IP Internet standard IETF 3720, IETF 3347 SAN-oriented Comparable to Fibre Channel in many ways
What is iscsi? Target names: iqn.year.com.namingauthority:uniquename eui:0123456789abcdef Fully qualified ibox.vmware.com:860/iqn.2005-01.come.vmware.ibox:target1 Hostname port iscsi name target Initiator-assigned host target numbers Non-privileged service Port 3260, anyone can be an iscsi server More info ietf.org, www.iscsistorage.com
What is NAS? File systems over TCP/IP NFS, CIFS most common Commonly used for sharing files NFS internet standard IETF 1094 NFS naming convention nfs.remote.com:/remote/filesystem More info ieft.org, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/network_file_system
SAN vs. NAS SAN FC, IP Block Storage NAS IP Network File System
Why iscsi is Interesting Emerging market 20-50% annual growth 1% of SAN market EMC, Cisco, NetApp backing Billions and billions in coming years Different approach to SAN Cheaper hardware Existing NICs Existing infrastructure Office cabling Administration expertise
Why iscsi is Interesting Different approach than NAS Raw storage, not file system Take advantage of existing network knowledge Authentication and encryption Routing Internet ready Longhaul No bridging Downsides Slower media, for now Higher CPU overhead
Why NAS is Interesting Prolific file-sharing approach Widespread use Easy to access remote data Uses existing file system tools Inexpensive Uses existing hardware Effective storage conglomeration Existing infrastructure Office cabling Administration expertise
How We Do iscsi Software initiator Based on Cisco reference implementation Using native vmkernel TCP/IP stack Works with daemon running in COS Hardware Initiator QLogic qla4010 HBA Looks like any other SCSI adapter Does its own networking Take advantage of existing storage implementation
How We Do NFS Just another way of getting storage space Internal implementation Uses vmkernel networking stack NFS version 3 over TCP only No version 2, no UDP Internal locking protocol Effort to work around NFSv3 locking deficiencies Mandatory, lease-based for ESX hosts Protects against data corruption
OK, Where's Our Storage? Both iscsi and NFS are currently being tested on a wide variety of devices Goal (as always) is broad coverage to enable customer choice Plan to certify storage from major vendors, including EMC s Celerra and CLARiiON, Network Appliance s FAS, and many others Check HCL for ESX 3 / VC 2 beta for more details
iscsi Features Boot support Available with the Qlogic qla4010 Not from the software initiator Target discovery Static targets SendTargets discovery No SLP discovery yet No isns discovery yet
iscsi Features ESX Server 3 features VMOTION VMFS 3 RDMs Multipath support Network routing SendTargets advertises multiple routes Initiators recognize them No heterogeneous multipathing Software supports single storage interface NIC binding for multiple SW initiators
iscsi Features Authentication CHAP Per HBA or per target None Security Separate LAN/vLAN No open IP ports Performance Good throughput, 50-80% of native Near-native CPU usage Much better than iscsi initiator in VM
iscsi Configuration Administration Set up required, unlike Fibre Channel IP address, name, discovery info Optionally alias, discovery options, authentication keys SNIA-based IMA library Configured through Virtual Console UI Common approach for all initiators Interface potentially available to other products No need for vendor-specific tools
NFS Features Security Standard AUTH_UNIX/AUTH_HOST security Hostname, userid, group id for file access All clear text, no AUTH_GSS or Kerberos No boot support ESX Server 3 features VMotion No RDMs
NFS Configuration Handled with VirtualCenter UI NIC configured for IP-based storage Storage is selected like any other disk or volume Data stores look like VMFS2 or VMFS3 volume
Questions?
Remember: IP Storage Rocks! Thanks for coming.