Storage Platform: Defining Leadership

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Storage Platform Defining Leadership

• Jeffrey Goldner
• ArchitectWDEGjeffgo _at_ microsoft.com
• Microsoft Corporation

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Session Outline

• Trends affecting Windows storage features
• Market
• Standards
• Customer Requirements
• Intersections with the hardware industry
• Key challenges
• Todays situation
• Current initiatives to address these challenges
• What comes next

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Session Goals

• Attendees should leave this session with the
  following
• A better understanding of the trends that impact
  Windows Storage
• A better understanding of current Microsoft
  initiatives dealing with some key storage
  industry challenges
• A better understanding of how storage hardware
  and software vendors can align with these goals
• The knowledge to find resources for these
  initiatives

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Storage Devices Key Windows Strategies
Leading platform supporting storage fabrics
Optimized platform features enabling new customer
scenarios in Personal Storage
Timely, comprehensive, quality platform support
for optical devices
Preferred platform for developing, integrating,
and deploying storage devices
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Key trends affecting Windows Storage

• Market
• Movement from direct to fabric attached storage
• Declining disk prices
• Higher capacity drives
• lower-cost consumer drivetechnologies
• Standards
• Moving beyond device interfaces
• Management
• Security
• Data integrity
• Compliance

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Key Trends Affecting Windows Storage (cont)

• Customer Requirements
• More global businesses
• Want data 24x7
• Want fast access
• More diverse, high volume data
• Scientific data, video images, etc.
• Data protection more complex
• Backup and retention
• Now requires management of multiple copies of
  data
• Archiving often overlooked when using disk-based
  backup
• Disaster recovery
• Need for greater distance between sites
• More businesses now using replication solutions
• Security
• Growing recognition of need for secure solutions
• Especially problematic with small form factors
  devices

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Intersections With the Hardware Industry

• Working jointly with the industry to ease the
  complexity of storage networks
• Interoperability
• Reliability
• Management
• Security
• Performance
• Goal is to integrate storage capabilities into
  the operating system
• Alignment of the Windows platform and hardware
  capabilities
• Enable new classes of applications to use these
  capabilities
• Enable vendors to take advantage of their
  value-added functions
• Make sure end-to-end scenarios are covered
• Ensure customer data is available and secure

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Key Challenges
Todays challenges have lead to initiatives to
produce solutions
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Todays Challenges

• Larger, hotter drives placed closer together
• Use of redundant arrays is it more reliable in
  the desktop market?
• Hidden corruption on mirrors
• Not enough focus on mechanical layouts
• Fabric attached storage has additional complexity
• More components that could fail
• High availability is achieved through redundancy
• Comes at a high cost
• OS may not be able to interpret true cause of
  errors
• Transient conditions, maintenance operations
• Backup and recovery
• Device, driver, application reliability
• Consistency of data
• Limited backup window precludes complete backups
• Access to previous versions

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ChallengesReliability (MS Internal Study)
Component Failures

• Microsoft data
• Disk drive is least reliable component
• Desktop, notebook and server
• Only covers component failure
• Not random corruptions
• Loss of data

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Todays Challenges

• Customer impact
• Larger volume of data at risk in catastrophic
  failures
• Risk of backup failure still high
• Are customers willing to pay more for higher
  reliability?
• Additional disk devices for backup purposes?

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Initiatives

• Disks
• Predictive failure analysis for disk drives
• Drive industry to standardized implementations
• Disk diagnostics and background processes to
  check data integrity
• Qualification program enhancements
• Fabrics
• New tools for viewing fabrics
• Increased resilience in the OS
• Coordinating with management applications
• Backup
• Use snapshot solutions coordinated with the OS
• Follow driver and provider models
• New device handling approach

• Reliability Problems
• Disk drives
• Heat
• Vibration
• Random corruption
• Fabric
• Cable failure
• Maintenance operations
• Managing errors
• Backup Integrity
• Open files
• Unreadable tape media
• Device driver problems

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Todays Challenges

• Performance Challenges
• Sequential performance is most commonly cited
  statistic
• This statistic gives an idealized performance
  measurement
• Vendor performance metrics look good
• Driving customers to lower-cost technologies
  before they can assess the impact to business
  goals
• BUT most I/O in a multitasking operating system
  is not sequential
• Random performance
• At the device level, little performance
  improvement over the last 5 years
• Requires expensive hardware solutions to improve
  random I/O performance (spindles vs. capacity)
• Disk drive margins tend to be low, so market
  opposition to improving mechanical performance
• Customer impact
• Although system performance has improved, not
  able to take advantage of full potential if you
  cant get to the data
• Drive customers to higher-priced storage

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Initiatives

• Performance Initiatives
• System and application optimizations
• Help decrease random I/O
• Memory Manager optimized to increase use of
  sequential I/O
• Pre-fetch for application launch and OS boot
• Rearrange data to increase
• Speed of OS loading
• Speed of application launch
• Low Priority I/O
• Allows some applications to run in the
  background user application gets disk priority
• Scheduled File I/O
• Application can reserve bandwidth for specific
  file (such as audio playback)
• I/O takes priority (counterpart to low priority)
• Volume alignment
• Best practice analyzers
• Application and load-specific tools to ensure
  adequate storage performance

• Performance Problems
• Multitasking system means there are always
  multiple processes accessing disk drives
• Random I/O access slow

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Todays Challenges

• Manageability Challenges
• Too many storage management pieces
• Number of tools increases with number of
  components
• Interfaces
• Standards
• Integrating new Windows storage features
• Time-lag to industry adoption
• Customer impact
• Confusion
• Complex storage management

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Initiatives

• Manageability Initiatives
• Better tools and interfaces
• Storage management infrastructure reduces need
  for multiple vendor tools
• Adopting and promoting standards
• Interfaces for SATA, Fibre Channel and iSCSI
• Applying Windows system initiatives to storage
  management
• Windows Management Instrumentation
• WS Management

• Management Problems
• Proliferation of tools, interfaces, standards
• Time-lag for hardware industry adoption of new
  Windows storage features

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Todays Challenges

• Interoperability Challenges
• Hardware-hardware
• Lack of standards conformance
• Hardware-software
• Non-alignment with OS driver models
• Integration with OS
• Slow adoption of infrastructure enhancements
• Customer impact
• Limited choices when building storage
  infrastructure
• Difficulty diagnosing problems
• Potential data loss, downtime, disruption of
  business

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Initiatives

• Interoperability Initiatives
• New programs such as Simple SAN
• Includes interoperability requirements for
  hardware and software vendors
• Conformance to driver models
• Adoption of storage interfaces
• New Windows tools to help diagnose problems
• Enhanced tests for hardware qualification
• Vendor education
• Windows driver and provider models
• Refining models to meet vendor needs
• The OS is the common denominator in all
  interoperability design
• Requires conformance to standards

• Interoperability Problems
• Hardware
• Drivers may not be optimal for all attached
  hardware
• Lack of adherence to standards
• Can lead to
• Suboptimal performance
• Inability to access device
• Hardware/software
• Drivers not conforming to current models
• Prevents correct detection and recovery by the OS
  or applications

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Todays Challenges

• Security Challenges
• Management interfaces
• Each hardware component has its own security
  management interface
• Device passwords rarely updated
• No integration of interfaces with the operating
  system (e.g., cant distribute credentials)
• No standards on how the integration is done
• Data
• Data on removable devices not protected
• Data in-flight may need to be encrypted
• Devices
• Many connect to networks with protocols that are
  not secure
• Implementation of secure network infrastructure
  is difficult
• Currently few/no policies restricting the use of
  devices
• Customer impact
• Corporate data at risk
• Personal data at risk

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Initiatives

• Security Initiatives
• Centralized infrastructure for fabric attached
  storage
• Standards-based implementation
• RADIUS, CHAP
• Fibre Channel and iSCSI
• Protection of management interfaces
• Authentication of devices
• Encryption where supported by the protocols
• Data
• File level encryption
• Block level encryption being investigated
• OS integration with devices that have built-in
  encryption (such as flash media)
• Devices
• Administrator policies for preventing user access
  to removable devices
• Standardized implementation of rights management

• Security Problems
• Management Interfaces
• Not integrated with OS
• Not standardized
• Data
• Data on removable devices not protected
• Devices
• Switches/arrays access non-secure IP protocol
• Few or no policies restricting device use

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Next Wave Storage Solution Initiatives

• Small and medium businesses
• Simple SAN initiative aims to simplify SANs for
  the small and midsize market
• Program qualification for
• Simple SAN solution components
• Simple SAN complete solutions
• Large/Enterprise market
• Many challenges remain, especially with regard to
  interoperability and manageability
• Increased focus on managing storage
• More capability built in to the operating system
• Industry prediction by 2006, SAN management
  functions will be embedded as part of the OS

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Microsoft Directions

• Driving initiatives for a better storage
  experience
• Listening to customers, partners, industry
• Making storage infrastructure a better fit with
  industry standards and partner needs
• Adoption of system level management initiatives
• Leading on providing a programmatic framework for
  storage vendors to deliver the best solutions on
  the Windows platform

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Call To Action

• Adopt Windows Storage Interfaces
• These will improve the storage experience
• Help us drive towards
• Greater reliability
• Higher performance
• Increased interoperability
• Improved security
• Better storage management
• Follow the logo program
• Submit products for qualification
• Keep up with updates to the program

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Community Resources

• Community Sites
• http//www.microsoft.com/communities/default.mspx
  
• List of Newsgroups
• http//communities2.microsoft.com/communities/news
  groups/en-us/default.aspx
• Attend a free chat or webcast
• http//www.microsoft.com/communities/chats/default
  .mspx
• http//www.microsoft.com/seminar/events/webcasts/d
  efault.mspx
• Non-Microsoft Community Sites
• http//www.microsoft.com/communities/related/defau
  lt.mspx

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Additional Resources

• Questions about this presentation
• hec5stor _at_ microsoft.com
• Storage at Microsoft
• http//www.microsoft.com/windowsserversystem/stora
  ge/default.mspx
• Community (Storage)
• http//www.microsoft.com/windowsserversystem/stora
  ge/community/default.mspx
• news//msnews.microsoft.com/microsoft.public.stora
  ge
• Logo program information
• http//www.microsoft.com/whdc/winlogo/default.mspx
  
• Standards organizations (Storage)
• http//www.t10.org
• http//www.t13.org
• http//www.snia.org