| NFS: Back to the Future? | Brian L. Wong, Distinguished Engineer, Sun Microsystems Network Storage |
| NFS has been around for a long time and does a lot of things. While it has many shortcomings and it has been outmarketed by other solutions, NFS and its variants still have a place in the future. This is particularly true given recent developments in optical transmission, raw silicon availability and storage technology. With some diligence in implementation and some marketing efforts, NFS can have a central place in the future computing landscape. | |
| Hummingbird Keynote, "NFS In the Microsoft World" | Danny Masci |
| Why should we use NFS with Microsoft Windows ? A discussion of the different Windows PC-based file and print sharing technologies and how NFS wins. | |
| "Where is NFS version 4?" | Spencer Shepler, Sun Microsystems |
| RFC3010, which defines NFS version 4, was published as a Proposed Standard by the IETF in December 2000. Implementations of the NFS version 4 protocol are actively being built and show much promise. The IETF's process of requiring implementation experience before moving a protocol to Draft Standard has shown to be prudent in the case of NFS version 4 where some protocol issues have been found and corrected. Some of these issues and the future of the standard will be discussed along with what related activities have taken place in the industry. | |
| "NFSv4 Replication and Migration" | Robert Thurlow, Sun Microsystems |
| NFS Version 4 will provide new support within the protocol for migration and replication, and a follow-on effort from the NFSv4 working group will define a server-to-server protocol. In this presentation, you will hear about progress of that work and how replication and migration will help you solve enterprise solutions. | |
| "Managing Performance in a Shared Storage Environment" | Anne C. Skamarock, Senior Analyst, Enterprise Management Associates |
| The primary value proposition for the NFS technology has always
been consolidation of data for shared access and ease of
management. Since the inception of NFS there has been a
constant call for greater performance from the shared storage
environments.
The outcry from customers requiring greater performance, lead us to develop the Network Attached Storage (NAS) appliance. These specialized appliances improved the service performance significantly. However, performance was still not satisfactory to the latency watching database managers. This presentation will look at the trade-offs between high performance and shared data access. How far can the industry push performance in a shared environment? Does it make sense to put latency sensitive applications data into a shared environment? Finally, this paper will look at tools that would allow customers to understand and control their performance in a shared storage environment. | |
| "Delegations in NFS-v4" | David Noveck, Network Appliance |
| Delegations are a protocol feature in NFS-v4 that allows the client to avoid communication with the server in many common situations. The performance benefits of delegations in various types of environments are discussed. Implementation issues that might impede widespread use of this feature are also explored. | |
| "NFSv4 Open Source Project Update" | Andy Adamson, U.Michigan/CITI |
| An overview of implemented features, with a description of the changes made to the Linux kernel to implement the protocol, and a presentation of issues in matching protocol requirements with POSIX behaviour in local Linux filesystems. A discussion of the management of client and server state, security and locking mechanisms, compound RPC, and client data caching as well as a comparison of performance of NFS Versions 3 and 4 implementations in areas such as reading, writing, and locking. Finally, closing with a discussion of some of the challenges in NFSv4 system administration and issues in migrating from and coexisting with earlier versions of NFS. | |
| "EMC Keynote: NAS for the Enterprise" | Christian Adams, NAS Principle Architect, EMC Corporation |
| Over the last few years, network-attached storage (NAS) has rapidly gained market share over direct-attached storage (DAS) and storage-area networks (SAN). Within the NAS market, the high-end, or enterprise, segment is growing the fastest. This talk focuses on the market requirements for enterprise NAS, and various solutions that strive to meet that need. It also discusses how NFSv4 can play a role in this market, and possible protocol extensions to better serve the needs of enterprise customers. | |
| Network Appliance Keynote, "Storage Networking" | Brian Pawlowski, Senior Technical Director, Network Appliance, Inc. |
| Arguments about SAN and NAS are becoming increasingly irrelevant. Customers are interested in solutions that solve problems. Where does NFS fit into all this? What are its strengths? What are its weaknesses? Do current trends suggest new directions for NFS evolution? All these questions will be answered. | |
| "NFS over RDMA" | Alex Chiu, Sun Microsystems |
| NFS over RDMA will deliver a high performance file access technology which offers high throughput, low latency, reduced CPU overhead, and memory-to-memory file access for in-room networks with high speed RDMA-based interconnects. | |
| "NFS: A Service Provider's Perspective" | Tim Bosserman, Consulting Research Engineer, Earthlink, Inc. |
| NFS is a crucial component in EarthLink's datacenter. It allows EarthLink to provide robust, scaleable services to our customer base. It is not a perfect solution, however. In this presentation, the EarthLink "standard architecture" will be introduced, and how NFS is used in that architecture. The competitive aspects of using NFS as a backend storage technology will be discussed, along with the drawbacks that have been encountered and the workarounds used to surmount them. Finally, a look at forthcoming technological improvements will be made, along with a discussion of how they may help EarthLink improve its backend services. | |
| "What's New in SpecFS 3.0" | Mark Mackey, Hewlett Packard Presentation |
| A high level discussion on the modifications made to new SFS benchmark. | |
| "Managing Data Resources using CIM/WBEM" | Doug McCallum, Sun Microsystems, Inc. |
| An introduction to CIM/WBEM, with information about what Sun does with CIM/WBEM, and a discussion of how this technology might apply to NFS. | |
| "Expanding Markets for NFS" | Craig O'Sullivan, Sun Microsystems, Inc. |
| NFS, the tried and true file sharing technology for the UNIX community, is expanding its capabilities for use with the Internet and for performance-oriented applications. This talk will focus on what types of customer applications will benefit from these new capabilites and why customers are likely to take notice. | |