What We Know so Far

Obviously, Microsoft is going to support SMB 3.0 in a big way. Windows Server 2012 will certainly be the premier server platform, especially for Windows 8 clients. But who else will support this new protocol?

Microsoft is going all-out to work with third parties, and is being unusually forthcoming with specifications and interoperability testing opportunities. I have seen reference to “plugfests” at the Storage Developers Conference and Build last year, as well as a special event on the Microsoft campus in early February. Specifications for SMB 2.2 (which has been renamed SMB 3.0) have been made available openly on the Microsoft website for months now, with frequent updates to match the progress of “Windows Next” development.

Microsoft’s presentation at SNIA SDC 2011 included contributions from Dennis Chapman of NetApp and John Hayden of EMC, so it’s a good bet that those two storage giants are on board to support SMB 3.0. Furthermore, NetApp’s Vaughn Stewart promised that version 8.2 of their core Data Ontap software will support the protocol when it is released this year.

Another clear vote of support came from the Samba team. A group of Samba developers participated in an “SMB 2.2 testing opportunity” at the Microsoft campus in late February. In a blog post, they outline the test setup and features tested (signing, persistent handles, and transparent client failover). So it seems very likely that Samba will also have at least partial SMB 3.0 support very soon.

Another player in the SMB market to announce support for SMB 2.2 is Likewise, makers of the popular server product used by many enterprise storage vendors. But Likewise was acquired by EMC’s Isilon division in late March. It is likely that many current customers will stick with Likewise for the time being, but the future is cloudier. At the very least, this indicates that Isilon will have solid SMB 3.0 support at some point.

Smaller companies may get SMB 3.0 support through Windows Server 2012, Likewise or Samba, but many are also working on their own homegrown support. Unlike SMB 1/CIFS, the simplified SMB2/3 protocol is much easier to implement successfully. This is why companies like Nimbus Data have come out publicly to endorse the protocol.

Which Features Will Be Supported?

SMB 3.0 is a big, complex protocol. It is unlikely that every implementation will support every feature. Indeed, certain elements (e.g. BranchCache and SMB Direct) are likely to be fairly rare while others (directory leasing and transparent failover) should be common.

If I could pick features to support, I would go with transparent failover and multichannel, along with the leasing improvements introduced since SMB 2.0. These would allow application server workloads in a fairly straightforward manner. The new client/server capabilities negotiation protocol is another must-have feature, since it allows pretty much everything else to function.

Encryption is another great feature on paper, but I’m not sure I would make it a priority. Application workloads are likely to be local, and network administrators have a fairly good handle on security in the data center. Plus, encryption was not even mentioned back at SDC, giving developers much less time to work on it. For these reasons, SMB 3.0 encryption should be late among third-party companies.

SMB Direct may see even less support among third-party array vendors. Most do not support InfiniBand, RoCE, or iWARP today, and those that do may find this new protocol difficult to add. In the long run, I do expect to see third-party SMB Direct-capable arrays appear, but for another year and not if customers don’t move in this direction.

VSS support is another big question mark. Although most NAS devices support snapshots today, it may be difficult to implement a “work-alike” VSS solution. Microsoft has already released documentation of this feature, however. The same could be said of BranchCache integration, though an open-source implementation is already available.

What about Everybody Else?

Although EMC and NetApp are big fish in the NAS market there are a great deal many more companies that could support SMB 3.0. BlueArc, now part of HDS, IBM, Dell, and HP are all major players. I would love to hear from those companies regarding SMB 3.0 plans.

Stephen’s Stance

Naysayers may point to previous Microsoft initiatives that failed to gain traction, but I think SMB 3.0 has a lot going for it. Microsoft’s openness with documentation and testing is a positive sign, as are commitments from major vendors like EMC, NetApp, and Samba. Add in the discontent with CIFS and existing work to implement SMB 2.0 and 2.1, and I expect widespread availability of at least some of the features of SMB 3.0 around the same time that Windows Server 2012 is released this summer.

© sfoskett for Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat, 2012. | Who Will Support SMB 3.0, and Which Features Will They Support?
This post was categorized as Enterprise storage, Gestalt IT, Virtual Storage. Each of my categories has its own feed if you'd like to filter out or focus on posts like this.

SMB Part 3

SMB 3.0 is just loaded with new features. In development, this was going to be SMB 2.2. But Microsoft added so much, it really deserves the major version number recently assigned.

As you may recall, SMB 2.0 was a complete rewrite of the classic Windows protocol sometimes known as CIFS. Released along with Windows Vista, SMB 2.0 addressed most of the issues storage geeks like me had with that much-maligned protocol. SMB 2.1, released with Windows 7 and Server 2008 R2, included features improving performance over WAN links, as well as BranchCache, which helped with remote offices.

Now we have SMB 3.0, which includes all this and much more. Slated to be part of Windows 8 and Server 2012, SMB 3.0 is backwards compatible with 2.0 and 2.1. New to the protocol is intelligent negotiation of features supported by clients and servers, a necessity given the veritable smorgasbord of new options added.

Big New Features Let SMB 3 Support Applications

Although SMB has traditionally been a protocol for client and end-user computing, SMB 3.0 is all about application server storage. This seems to be the message out of Microsoft right now: Using file server storage for applications including Exchange, SQL Server, and Hyper-V. This is a very different mission for any storage protocol, and required quite a bit of reengineering. As you will see, nearly every added feature supports this new mission.

Perhaps the most important new feature is transparent failover of client access. This means that clients can remain connected even if the server they are talking to fails, and they can recover and continue talking to different server in a cluster if needed.

SMB multichannel is another massive new feature added to the protocol. It allows you to use multiple network links if they are available, scaling performance and adding additional fault-tolerant connections. Microsoft talks about consolidating four 10 GbE links into a 40 Gb channel between a client and file server. Pretty impressive, if you ask me!

If you want even more performance, SMB Direct enables communication over RDMA adapters, including InfiniBand, RoCE, and iWARP. These ultralow latency networks should allow massive performance, in the gigabyte per second range. Who would have thought that SMB would beat Fibre Channel for throughput and latency?

SMB 3.0 also includes Remote VSS support, allowing snapshots to be made on the fileserver instead of the local server. Microsoft’s familiar Volume Shadowcopy Services (VSS) are the standard mechanism in Windows for application-consistent snapshots, and this now works for file server storage too.

And More For Clients

There’s a whole lot more in SMB 3.0 besides application server support. On-the-fly encryption of data traffic is huge, and directory leases and BranchCache improvements accelerate remote client performance. There’s even more, but I’m not sure if I’m allowed to talk about it all yet!

Encryption is one of those funny things that people don’t think about when it comes to storage protocols. Even when it is supported, it’s not often used except outside the local network. But with SMB increasingly able to deal with WAN links, it was a good idea to add encryption to the menu.

Some of the big changes in SMB 2.1 revolve around “leases” to improve file access over unreliable networks. SMB 3.0 adds directory leases to the mix, so clients should stay connected and active even as networks drop and reconnect. This is especially important for WiFi networks and tablets.

BranchCache is another often-overlooked technology in Windows 7. It enables peer-to-peer offload of file server connections in remote office scenarios. SMB 3.0 adds extensions for the next version of BranchCache, supporting deduplication, another exciting new storage feature in Windows Server 2012.

Stephen’s Stance

My days of not taking Windows file servers seriously are definitely at an end. File protocols are dramatically improving, even as end users are looking for alternatives to the tired block protocols they have been using for decades. Microsoft has a real opportunity to push application server storage forward, and I am excited to be able to watch these developments. I’ll be writing a lot more about SMB 2.0, 2.1, and 3.0 in the coming months. But for now, I recommend downloading the beta and trying out some of these new features for yourself!

Special thanks to Jose Barreto of Microsoft for the protocol image and lots more info!

© sfoskett for Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat, 2012. | SMB 3 is Going to be Huge, in both Scope and Impact
This post was categorized as Enterprise storage, Features, Gestalt IT, Virtual Storage. Each of my categories has its own feed if you'd like to filter out or focus on posts like this.

IBM really knows how to put on an event, so come on out to Orlando next month!

Introducing IBM Edge2012

IBM Edge2012 is divided into 3 tracks: TechnicalEdge is targeted at IT professionals; ExecutiveEdge is for business and IT executives; and WinningEdge is sales training for IBM partners. I’ll obviously be focusing my time at TechnicalEdge, as I imagine most of my readers will, though I’m curious about ExecutiveEdge as well.

As you may know, I have been working with IBM since early 2011, contributing content to the Storage Community blog that they sponsor. I have also been strengthening my relationship with the company through other work, including a recent webinar, and will continue all this in the future.

IBM’s storage organization is really trying to step into the “big leagues” of thought leadership in enterprise storage. Of course, IBM invented enterprise storage in previous decades, but it seems that many customers overlook their products, contributions, and technology when considering storage purchases. This is a shame, because the company has some great products like SVC and the new, improved XIV array.

I’ll also be hosting a “Tweetup”/#Storagebeers at Edge! Sign up now!

My Session: VMware vSphere Integration

IBM has really gone all out in supporting server virtualization lately. The company recently announced a standard platform for VMware VAAI across all major storage products, giving them the technical chops to compete with EMC, NetApp, HDS, HP, and Dell. VMware integration is the topic of a session I will be presenting at TechnicalEdge in June, as a matter of fact.

Introducing VMware vSphere Storage Features - This introductory-level session discusses the challenges created by server virtualization, focusing on VMware vSphere. We will begin with an overview of the issues of data format (SCSI LUNs and NFS shares vs. vmdk files) as well as I/O patterns (“the I/O blender”) and what can be done to address them. We will then proceed to discuss the advances in VMware vSphere 4 and 5 with regard to storage integration, specifically the VAAI and VASA APIs. Attendees will come away with knowledge of the special requirements of virtual servers and the integration points with enterprise storage arrays, including IBM’s offerings.

Wednesday, June 6 at 1 PM

Come to IBM Edge (Cheaper!)

New! Win a free pass to TechnicalEdge2012!

If you are an IBM storage customer, you really must come to IBM Edge in June. Even if you aren’t already an IBM customer, you might consider coming along to the technical sessions. I’m sure you’ll learn something (as will I), and you might even come away with a new appreciation for IBM’s products.

Registration is open now, and I’m happy to announce that readers of my blog are eligible for a special discount! Just enter the code, “A2Z” when you register!

If you do come to IBM Edge2012, come find me and say hello. I’ll probably be in the sessions, the social media lounge, and the bar for most of the event!

Not a bad place for a tech conference!

One more thing: IBM is hosting Edge2012 at a wonderful resort in Orlando. My family vacation last year was at the same resort, and my kids just loved the water park at the Hilton. It’s extremely close to Epcot Center, too, so you can take your family on vacation while you go to the technical sessions. If you can stand being outside in Orlando in June, that is!

© sfoskett for Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat, 2012. | IBM Edge2012 – Orlando
This post was categorized as Enterprise storage, Events, Virtual Storage. Each of my categories has its own feed if you'd like to filter out or focus on posts like this.

I'm headed back to Las Vegas for Interop once again

I am thrilled to return to speak at Interop next week, though not so much about returning to Las Vegas for the third time already this year. This time around, I’ll be on two Interop panel discussions in Mike Fratto’s storage track. If you will be at Interop and would like to meet up, let me know.

Considering Interop

The grand old tradeshow, Interop has changed a great deal over the decades. No longer affiliated with Novell (obviously), Interop is unusual in that it attracts a wide variety of companies in many different IT verticals. Fields like Wi-Fi networking, network security, data center and campus Ethernet switching, and (yes) storage have other shows, of course, but most are affiliated with one company or another. Interop has become the home of the independents, the upstarts, and the startups in enterprise IT. Shows like EMC World and Cisco Live are great draws for buyers and companies within their ecosystem, but what about their competitors? Interop has become the place to find them. Interop is really 2 different events: The tradeshow and conference. The show floor in New York and Las Vegas is reasonably sized and houses a diverse group of companies. Folks looking to browse the latest enterprise IT technology enjoy walking the floor for a day or so. Then there is the conference, with its educational tracks and speakers like me. This is a separate admission, so traffic is usually a little lighter. Panel discussions usually attract a packed house, however. This is especially true if, as is the case for my Las Vegas panels, they fall at the middle of the event. I am hopeful that we will have a good turnout this time.

My Plans For Interop

Our panel session last year was standing room only!

I will be arriving Monday, just before noon, and will spend the day on the tradeshow floor. If you would like to meet up for lunch or dinner, or just to walk the halls, let me know. I’ll probably be getting a few folks together for dinner and drinks Monday night! Tuesday, I have 2 panel sessions. “What’s Next in Storage” will be held in Lagoon D at 11:30, and “Great Debate: Cloud Storage Is Dead on Arrival” will be in the same room at 3:45. I plan to record and stream both sessions live from Interop, so watch this post for the embedded video.

What’s Next in Storage

• Location: Lagoon D
• Tuesday, May 8, 2012, 11:30 AM-12:30 PM
• Speakers:
• Moderator – Mike Fratto, Editor, Network Computing
• Panelist – Stuart Miniman, Senior Analyst, wikibon
• Panelist – Howard Marks, Founder & Chief Scientist; Contributing Editor/Blogger, DeepStorage.net; Informationweek
• Panelist – Stephen Foskett, Community Organizer, Gestalt IT

Storage continues to evolve to meet the demands of the enterprise. Whether you are supporting big data initiatives, building a private cloud, going to the cloud, or trying to reduce costs and make more efficient use of your existing storage systems, there are many options to choose from. We’ll also get their take on what is coming in the 12-18 months and how to prepare for it. Come prepared with questions as this session will be mostly Q&A driven.

Great Debate: Cloud Storage Is Dead On Arrival

Note: I’m debating Howard on cloud storage. He’s been asked to argue that cloud storage is dead, and I’ll be taking the stance that it is alive and well. I don’t think this is Howard’s true belief, but it should make for an interesting panel debate.

• Location: Lagoon D
• Tuesday, May 8, 2012, 3:45 PM-4:45 PM
• Speakers:
• Moderator – Mike Fratto, Editor, Network Computing
• Panelist – Howard Marks, Founder & Chief Scientist; Contributing Editor/Blogger, DeepStorage.net; Informationweek
• Panelist – Stephen Foskett, Community Organizer, Gestalt IT

The statement under debate is that cloud storage is dead on arrival. There are a number of benefits with cloud storage like huge cost savings and supporting public cloud applications, but there are also draw back such as governance and the potential for lock-in. In this debate, our panel of experts will be taking one side or the other and in an old-school debate format, will be arguing their respective points. We’ll ask the audience to vote before and after to see who wins. Bring your questions and stump our experts. We’ll have fun and learn something.

Join Me at Interop!

I’ll also be getting some folks together Tuesday for lunch and dinner, as well as evening entertainment. I know quite a few people who are attending the event, and I always like getting together as diverse a group as possible at events like this. I fly out first thing Wednesday morning. Although it would be nice to spend longer at Interop, I just can’t afford to take a whole week out of my schedule for the event.

© sfoskett for Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat, 2012. | Interop Las Vegas 2012
This post was categorized as Enterprise storage, Events, Personal, Virtual Storage. Each of my categories has its own feed if you'd like to filter out or focus on posts like this.

NAB is one of my favorite trade shows

As I mentioned earlier, the  National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) Show is one of my favorites, with the wonderful variety of companies and products in attendance. Everything from professional video and broadcast equipment to IT infrastructure gear to celebrities (including the cast of Arrested Development) are on display at NAB. But what were the highlights? Here are my thoughts.

A Year of Resolution

Many people make New Year’s resolutions, but NAB Show 2012 highlights the year of the different type of resolution: professional gear is moving to 4K, and everyone else is moving beyond HD. My latest camera has a 24 megapixel sensor, my iPad is beyond 1080p, and Ben Freedman and I are planning for HD streaming of Tech Field Day. Video producers, too, are moving to HD and beyond.

All this high resolution video and photography strains the underlying equipment like never before. Suddenly, hard disk drives can’t keep up with a single camera, let alone multiple streams. FireWire and USB 2.0 are passé as computers move to USB 3 and Thunderbolt. Video producers increasingly rely on Fibre Channel, Thunderbolt, and lightning quick PCI express flash cards just to keep up.

These momentous changes were incredibly visible at NAB. A host of impressive new cameras were introduced (the Blackmagic Cinema Camera and Sony FS700 were the highlights) and RED continues to gain mind share. But every cinema camera on display highlighted beyond-1080p resolution (2K, 2.5K, and of course 4K).

The crowd inspects the new Blackmagic Cinema Camera

Interestingly, both the Blackmagic and Sony cameras mentioned above use conventional still camera optics, Canon EF and Sony NEX E-Mount, respectively. The idea is to bring professional post-HD video quality to the masses. Blackmagic, especially, embraces this “prosumer” market segment and is priced the Cinema Camera at just $3000. This camera also eschews proprietary media cards in favor of off-the-shelf 2.5 inch SATA SSD’s!

Trouble Downstream

These cameras excel at producing massive media files, and the storage and I/O requirements are mindbending. NAB was awash in high-speed interfaces (3G-SDI and Thunderbolt) and massive data storage devices. It was great to see companies like Active Storage, Object Matrix, DDN, and AmpliData getting so much attention from the professional media crowd. On the desktop side, LaCie, G Technology (now part of Western Digital), and Promise, as well as lesser-known companies like Rocstor, were ready to soak up all that data.

Fusion-io's new ioFX card brings ioMemory to the masses

One of the coolest storage products at NAB was not featured in the booth of its own. Fusion-io stocked a dozen booths with their new ioFX workstation flash storage card. Although not quite as fast as the company’s respected ioDrive, the ioFX wowed the audience with its attainable pricing of just $2495. Fusion-io also announced an SDK on Wednesday, allowing software natively to access the ioFX and ioDrive at full speed without translating their “ioMemory” into a fake disk drive. Cool times two!

I'm sure most people overlooked the significance of Sumitomo's Thunderbolt cables

Thunderbolt was the highlight of last year’s NAB Show. Although the release of Thunderbolt peripherals has not been as rapid as many (including myself) would like, there were some bright spots at NAB this year. Most people certainly overlooked it, but the release of copper and optical Thunderbolt cables by Sumitomo suggests that prices of this critical component could be coming down soon. Lenovo was also showcasing the first official Thunderbolt-equipped PC, and it was connected to an AOC monitor!

Thunderbolt to 8 Gb Fibre Channel, 10 Gb Ethernet, and SATA

Thunderbolt docking stations remain a fantasy, apart from Apple’s own Thunderbolt Display, but a number of clever I/O adapters were scattered on the show floor. ATTO was showing off their line of ThunderLink converters (8 Gb FC, 10 Gb Ethernet, and SATA), and Sonnet could even convert a Mac Mini into something like an Xserve(r) with their RackMac mini, complete with dual PCI express desktop card slots!

Non-Apple Thunderbolt is a reality in 2012!

Stephen’s Stance

NAB Show remains one of my favorites, and one of the only trade shows I’d unreservedly recommend attending on one’s own dime. From Thunderbolt to post-HD video to solid state storage, NAB has it all. And did I mention that the cast of Arrested Development was there, too? Oh yeah, and W. Curtis Preston, Robin Harris, Nick Pearce, Jason Collier, Scott Shadley, and many more besides!

© sfoskett for Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat, 2012. | NAB Show 2012: My Initial Thoughts
This post was categorized as Apple, Enterprise storage, Personal, Photography, Terabyte home, Virtual Storage. Each of my categories has its own feed if you'd like to filter out or focus on posts like this.

Fusion-io's new ioFX card brings ioMemory to the masses

Fusion-io has cut a swath through the storage industry, accumulating mind share like a game of Katamari. Awareness seems impossibly high for such a small, young company: Nearly everyone I talk to would love to get their hands on one of their lightning fast ioMemory cards. But Fusion-io has an Achilles’ heel: Their products cost more than an economy car! All that changes this quarter with the release of the workstation-oriented Fusion ioFX card.

Fusion-io and ioMemory

Most of my readers are aware of solid-state drives (SSD’s), and the tremendous benefit they bring over traditional spinning hard disk drives. But Fusion-io’s lineup of ioMemory cards are an entirely different animal. Although the Fusion-io driver emulates the standard disk drive, nothing could be further than the truth. These desktop PCIe cards are an order of magnitude faster than any SSD, with I/O latency measured in microseconds.

Essentially, a Fusion-io card can be thought of as a tier of memory as much as a tier of storage, though of course this is not how it appears to the operating system. A single Fusion-io card can easily handle hundreds of thousands of IOPS, a veritable data center worth of I/O workload. Not everyone needs this kind of storage performance, but the company has found many takers in fields as diverse as media, virtualization, and databases and enterprise applications.

Introducing the Fusion ioFX

The newly announced Fusion ioFX card continues this performance tradition. Though writes are significantly slower, the card is indistinguishable from Fusion-io’s flagship ioDrive lineup in terms of driver and application support. Even with less expensive quad MLC flash architecture, the ioFX still boasts gigabyte speed read bandwidth and access latency under 50 µs. The half height PCI Express card works with Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux and includes the same ioSphere management software as the flagship line.

But the big news is price: Where the ioDrive lineup was priced out of consideration for workstation use, with most buyers spending over $10,000 per card, the ioFX lists at just $2495! This pricing completely changes the dynamic and market for Fusion-io’s products. For the first time, companies can equip masses of workstations with Fusion-io cards, and even enthusiasts can get in on the fun (provided they are fairly well-heeled and have an available PCI Express card slot).

Although initially targeted at the creative market, I believe that the ioFX has broader appeal. Enterprise applications don’t necessarily need maximum performance, and this price allows companies to put a Fusion-io card in nearly every server. Then there is the virtualization market, for which PCI storage has much appeal. Even lab, proof of concept, and enthusiast users would love a Fusion-io card. But the company’s products have always been locked out of these spaces due to high pricing. The ioFX changes everything.

Stephen’s Stance

The ioFX was the highlight of NAB Show 2012 to me. Bringing massive performance to the masses, the ioFX continues Fusion-io’s tactic of shaking up the industry. And since it uses the same ioMemory architecture and drivers as the flagship ioDrive line, I expect Fusion-io will have difficulty keeping up with demand.

© sfoskett for Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat, 2012. | Fusion-io Hits the Mass Market with the Affordable ioFX Card
This post was categorized as Apple, Enterprise storage, Terabyte home, Virtual Storage. Each of my categories has its own feed if you'd like to filter out or focus on posts like this.

Tech Field Day is one of the coolest things I've ever been involved in. And who'd have thought I never did a storage-focused event before now?

I’ve been organizing Tech Field Day events for three years, and I’ve been in enterprise storage for far longer. So it’s kind of surprising to realize that I’ve never hosted a Field Day focused on enterprise storage! That changes this month, with Storage Field Day on April 26 and 27. The delegates and presenters are all in order, and it’s really an amazing event.

Don’t get me wrong, I’ve invited a huge variety of storage focused companies to come to previous Tech Field Day events, including familiar names like EMC, NetApp, Compellent, 3PAR, HP, Dell, Drobo and many more. And we’ve seen a large number of storage startups at Tech Field Day, including Nimble, Zerto, Druva, and more. But we’ve never had an event focused entirely on storage!

Storage Field Day has an amazing lineup of presenters, with a special focus on disruptive market entrants. We will start off on Thursday with Kaminario, followed by Nimbus Data. After lunch, we will return to Drobo before heading to a meeting with Coraid. Thursday evening, Quest Software is sponsoring our party, and gets their own short presentation just prior.

The Hiller Aviation Museum looks like a very cool place for a party!

Continuing our tradition of locating interesting party facilities, our tech field day party will be held at the Hiller Aviation Museum. The place looks amazing, reminding me quite a bit of the Museum of Flight we visited in Seattle. It is interesting to note that many IT geeks are also “into” cars and planes, explaining last month’s visit to Club Auto Sport.

The Hiller is rolling out their Flight Sim Zone for us, and will have the museum gallery open as well. We’ve also got an open bar and buffet, as usual. If you are in the area and would like to attend the party, drop me a line. Space is extremely tight, but I might be able to fit in a few extra folks.

You never know what surprises await at Tech Field Day (like these Drobo cupcakes!)

We begin Friday’s presentations with updates from Dell and Brocade. After lunch, we would head off to Tintri before finishing up at Pure Storage.

On the delegate side, we’ve got lots of great folks. Returning are Scott D. Lowe, Derek Schauland, Chris Evans, Howard Marks, Fabio Rapposelli, Robin Harris, Nigel Poulton, and Robert Novak. And we’ve got some newbies, too: Hans Deleenheer and Ray Lucchesi.

As with all Tech Field Day events lately, the entire content will be streamed live online at the Tech Field Day website. Head over there on Thursday and Friday to watch the presentations and the delegate discussion. You are also welcome to participate online using the #SFD1 hash tag on Twitter.

This schedule is unbelievably packed, but it’s the best we could do. There was just way too much interest in Storage Field Day! I have mixed feelings about having to turn away more companies than I can accept at the event, and hope that this enthusiasm translates into a successful Storage Field Day 2 later in the year! Let’s just hope everyone signs up earlier this time so I don’t have to turn them away.

Of course, we’ve also got the Solid-State Storage Symposium the same week, and I urge you to consider attending that event. Free tickets are available now, and the presenter lineup there is equally impressive!

© sfoskett for Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat, 2012. | Storage Field Day 1 – Silicon Valley
This post was categorized as Enterprise storage, Events, Personal, Virtual Storage. Each of my categories has its own feed if you'd like to filter out or focus on posts like this.

We're talking Solid State Storage at our upcoming Symposium in San Jose!

It seems like everything in storage is in flux right now, with virtualization, commoditization, convergence, and solid state disrupting everything. That’s why we at Gestalt IT have decided to host a Symposium on the topic of Solid State Storage: We’ll be bringing in experts from a number of top companies to talk tech, and are inviting anyone interested to attend in person or watch online!

Solid state storage means a lot of things to a lot of people:

• Solid state drives (SSDs) from companies like Intel, Micron, Samsung, STEC, and others are making massive inroads from the laptop to the enterprise
• Solid state storage arrays are coming on strong, led by companies like Whiptail, Kaminario, Pure Storage, SolidFire, Nimbus, Greenbytes, Violin, and many others
• Then there are the PCI cards from Fusion-io, Virident, Micron, LSI, and lots more besides
• And some are using solid-state as a tier or a cache – “little companies” like EMC, NetApp, IBM, HP, HDS, Dell, as well as cool startups like Nimble, Tintri, Nutanix, Virsto, and more!

Honestly, I could go on all day talking about solid state storage, and I’m sure I’m leaving some of my favorite players out of this off-the-cuff list. The point is, solid state storage is huge and getting huger. And it’s time to get the word out on the many and varied faces of solid state!

We’re holding this open Symposium on April 25, in the heart of silicon valley and inviting any and all to attend. We’ve got an amazing lineup of companies presenting, including Nimble Storage, Nimbus Data, Permabit, SolidFire, Violin Memory, Virident, and more to be announced.

And these discussions will be moderated by some seriously-awesome independent storage folks: Chris M Evans, Howard Marks, and Nigel Poulton. And we’re thrilled to have Robin Harris delivering the keynote, since he’s been writing quite a bit about solid state storage lately! This is going to be great!

The coolest thing is this: Everyone is invited to participate!

• If you’re in the Bay Area, come join us at the Symposium – free tickets are available now!
• If not, you can watch the event live at TechFieldDay.com and participate using the #SSSS hashtag on Twitter!

The event is at the DoubleTree San Jose Hotel, right near SJC airport, and lasts from 9 AM to 4 PM on Wednesday, April 25!

If you’re an analyst or member of the press, drop me a line (sfoskett@gestaltit.com)! Same goes if you’re a company in the space – we still have a bit more space on the panels!

© sfoskett for Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat, 2012. | Solid State Storage Symposium – San Jose, CA
This post was categorized as Enterprise storage, Events, Virtual Storage. Each of my categories has its own feed if you'd like to filter out or focus on posts like this.

I’ve long maintained a general calendar of IT industry events, along with my own schedule appearing in the sidebar of the blog. Now I’m adding another way to keep track of me: An events newsletter!

I’ll be posting about every industry event I travel to, from Tech Field Day and Building Virtual Environments, to vBeers, VMworld, and everything in between. If you subscribe through email or rss, you’ll be notified of these trips. It’s a great way to meet up with me wherever you are!

This newsletter will only include events that I’m organizing or attending, and I promise I won’t spam you about insignificant or off-topic things. It’s just a way for me to keep in touch with all my friends in the industry, and hopefully to meet up with you all as I travel the country and the world.

Sign up now! Enter your address in the form below, or just subscribe to this rss feed.

My promise to you:

1. No advertisements – This is a way to let you know where I’m going and what I’m doing, not a way to spam you with ads.
2. Simple to follow – Each post title will include the name of the event and the location, so you can skip the ones you’re not interested in.
3. Just between us – I won’t sell your name or place anything here other than industry events I’m attending.

© sfoskett for Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat, 2012. | Subscribe to my new Events newsletter!
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SMB and CIFS was born out of the wild pre-history of PC networking

Computers aren’t much good on their own. This simple fact was evident even at the dawn of the microcomputing age, and has never been more true today in the “post-PC” world. If the standard microcomputer is the “Wintel” box (Microsoft’s Windows, Intel’s CPUs, and all that implies) then the standard network services protocol is SMB. So let’s take a nice deep dive into SMB, past, present, and future!

Networking PCs

In the mid-1980′s, IBM and Microsoft came to dominate microcomputers with what became known generically as “the PC.” PCs ran DOS, and DOS had no native networking capability whatsoever. But the use of PCs in business was growing rapidly, and a client/server computing paradigm loomed on the horizon.

It is just at this moment when standards-based local area networks (LANs) appeared. 3COM’s Ethernet rapidly gained strength, even against IBM’s own token ring, DECnet, and many others besides.

IBM was strong out of the gate with “PC-Network”, a line of proprietary networking equipment for PCs. Sytek created a complete API, known as NetBIOS, for inter-PC communication, along with their own layer-3 protocol. IBM ported NetBIOS to token ring, with an API emulator known as the NetBIOS Enhanced User Interface or NetBEUI. This term was later appropriated by Microsoft to refer to NBF, a layer-3 protocol for NetBIOS on Ethernet, causing much confusion.

Now that a standard LAN API was available, it was time for a higher-layer protocol for file access. IBM developed server message block (SMB), which used NetBIOS session and datagram services for transport.

One of the curious aspects of the single-tasking DOS operating system is the way it handles file open/close operations. Batch files would open and close a file many, many times as they proceeded through their instructions. This was no problem for a local disk, but network latency caused performance issues. So SMB included a client-side caching mechanism with opportunistic locks to reduce network traffic while still allowing the client and server to stay in sync. OpLocks are a hallmark of the SMB protocol even today.

The Rise and Fall of LAN Manager

At the same time, 3COM created their own storage networking protocol for PCs, called 3+Share, along with a server hardware product known as the 3Server. This had nothing in common with IBM’s SMB protocol, but it did work well with 3COM’s Ethernet equipment.

But another company quickly came to dominate the emerging PC LAN business: Novell’s NetWare roared ahead of 3COM, IBM, and everyone else and posed a serious threat to Microsoft’s hold on the PC itself. NetWare was a file server in the modern sense, and performed extremely well. So Microsoft turned to PC networking leaders, IBM and 3COM, to develop an entirely new PC stack.

The resulting operating system, OS/2, included a serious NetWare challenger called LAN Manager but sold under other names (IBM LAN Server, 3COM 3+Open, etc). LAN Manager included IBM’s basic SMB protocol and NetBEUI stack, allowing OS/2 and other operating systems to share files, printers, and other network resources. And it ran great on Ethernet, from 3COM and many others.

OS/2 flamed out as Microsoft pushed Windows instead, but the networking protocol survived. Around 1991, 3COM turned over their work to Microsoft and exited the market to focus on hardware. In 1992, Microsoft released Widows for Workgroups, which used SMB for most networking functions. This was followed a year later by Windows NT Advanced Server, which implemented much of LAN Manager (including SMB) separately from OS/2. Every version of Windows since then has relied heavily on SMB.

Towards a Common File System

Microsoft’s network offerings weren’t that great in the early 1990′s, but it was enough to cause competitors like Novell to stumble later in the decade. Novell remained dominant in business, but the Windows NT 3.51/Windows 95 push made SMB a popular workgroup alternative.

But the entire industry was in for a shock. By 1995, the Internet became the killer app for computers generally and PCs specifically. And the Internet was built on the Internet Protocol (IP), not NetBIOS’ NBF or NetWare’s IPX/SPX. Microsoft initially ported NetBIOS to run over TCP/IP, then released an experimental version of SMB that eliminated NetBIOS entirely, but these took a while to catch on.

Sun was a serious challenger to Microsoft in these early Internet days, and had proposed a standard file protocol. In 1996, Microsoft responded to Sun’s WebNFS protocol with their own Common Internet File System or CIFS, which was an enhanced version of SMB over IP. This would become the standard Windows networking protocol for the next decade.

Microsoft’s CIFS proposal specified a standard version of SMB with new enhancements like symbolic and hard links and larger file sizes. CIFS also offered an option of “direct host SMB,” which eliminated NetBIOS and allowed direct communication over TCP port 445. But most CIFS implementations still relied on NetBIOS’ broadcast-based service location protocol and LanMan authentication.

Every version of Microsoft Windows has relied on SMB for most network functions since Windows for Workgroups 3.11

Incidentally, the IETF drafts for CIFS were never completed or ratified and have now expired. Microsoft finally issued a standard MS-CIFS spec in 2007, but it has been criticized as incomplete. This is to be expected of a protocol that evolved organically over a decade of innovation through many diverse implementations!

Special thanks to Howard Marks for feedback and assistance!

© sfoskett for Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat, 2012. | From LAN Manager and SMB to CIFS: The Evolution of Prehistoric PC Network Protocols
This post was categorized as Computer History, Enterprise storage, Features. Each of my categories has its own feed if you'd like to filter out or focus on posts like this.