NFSv4.1 with pNFS -- A Tipping Point for Standards-Based Network Storage Consolidation?
By Don Grabski, SNIA NFS SIG co-chair (Panasas)

About NFS

NFS is a communication protocol to make data stored on file servers available to any computer on a network. NFS clients are included in all common Operating Systems and allow servers to communicate with the file system in the storage. NFS also ensures interoperability among vendor solutions, allows users to have a choice of best-of-breed products in their storage networks, and eliminates risks associated with proprietary technology. NFS v4.1 protocol has resulted in many storage management enhancements, including global name space, a feature that can help storage administrators consolidate many pieces of hardware to look like a single system, head and storage scaling as well as non-disruptive upgrades that can be made to the system while maintaining performance. These features all work to address the need to reduce storage operating costs, improve storage network performance, and consolidate systems to reduce management

Parallel Network File System (pNFS)

The requirements associated with scale-out networked storage means the NFS standard must make significant changes to remain viable. The future protocol for scale-out networked storage is Parallel I/O Network File System (pNFS). pNFS allows users to access storage devices directly and in parallel by leveraging the combination of Parallel I/O and NFS. Parallel I/O delivers very high application performance and allows for massive scalability without diminished performance. Single sequential I/O patterns have many bottlenecks, which adversely affect performance, for example there is no load balancing and it can’t aggregate other devices. However, pNFS solves these issues by providing global name space functionality without requiring forklift upgrades while allowing storage administrators to scale performance and storage capacity without disruption. This lowers the total cost of ownership and maximizes consolidation of storage.

NFS v4.1 with pNFS is a tipping point opportunity in the industry for standards based network storage consolidation. The pNFS standard supports block, file and object-based data files providing an opportunity for customers to solve the daunting challenges of prolific storage and client growth with a variety of options from multiple vendors, all standard based ensuring interoperability and eliminating vendor lock in.

pNFS Status

The High Performance Computing community has enjoyed the benefit of parallel computing for years in both research and business critical applications, thus client consolidation, scalability and eliminating performance bottle necks has already been field validated with variations of the forth coming pNFS standard. The estimated IETF ratification for pNFS completion is end of 2009. pNFS for a standard Linux distribution is anticipated in mid 2010.

Consult the SNIA NFS SIG home page for the latest in education, events and pNFS deployment status.

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