Cloud computing trends: Looking at server and storage integration

Looking at every stage of it development, whether mainframe, minicomputer, or later in the PC, Internet age, we all find that the subversion of it usage thinking and patterns leads to a big change in technology trends. In fact, the concept of cloud computing began to be gradually known, that is, ithttp://www.aliyun.com/zixun/aggregation/31091.html "> Technology development has a far-reaching impact, The idea of highly virtualized resources and instantly serving users on demand has prompted a series of changes in the data center in recent years, including server virtualization, storage virtualization, network virtualization, unified computing, integration and many other hotspots. But this time we will be focusing on SAS and raid, from these two small areas to glimpse, and find out why the integration of servers and storage is one of the trends in cloud computing.

Chipset Integration sas--get rid of the shackles of traditional ROC

The advent of cloud computing in fact, the use of IT resources high-performance, high usage, low-cost demand, implementation of the cloud computing equipment Interface technology, is the interface technology requires high transmission performance and bandwidth, good scalability and simple cable connections. Compared with other interface technologies, SAS technology is in line with the current development trend of cloud computing.

Figure I: SAS technology has a stable technical roadmap, and has been supported by many vendors such as Intel, LSI, IBM, Seagate and so on.

SAS technology is the trend of enterprise storage interface technology, which can be validated by the whole generation of storage systems such as HDS, NETAPP, Dell, IBM and so on. The traditional ROC model (Raid-on-chip) now appears to have proved unsuitable for current technology trends, either LSI, promise "PowerPC processor +sas Controller", or "XScale processor +sas Controller" used by Intel in the past. Are the "divide and conquer" approach used in the past to address the bottleneck of computing resources, which is increasingly redundant as processors become more powerful.

Figure II: Intel's upcoming Romley platform in the second half of this year will change the traditional ROC model. The Romley platform integrates raid acceleration in the Xeon E5 processor (using the Sandy Bridge microprocessor architecture), and is more critical to support the Patsburg of integrated SAS technology, Patsburg to complete the SAS switching function.

Figure three: The Romley platform uses the cloud storage platform of the model. As we can see from the diagram, the Patsburg on the Romley platform supports two X4 SAS connections, a total of 8 SAS ports, and is able to build scalable, high-capacity, enterprise-class cloud storage solutions through the Romley platform.

As one of the drives of SAS technology, Intel integrates the SAS switching function on its Romley platform, which is actually a manifestation of the integration of server and storage, with the rapid increase of X86 processor performance in these years, the significant increase of computing power enables the processor to undertake more computing tasks. This approach allows system vendors to take full advantage of system board space and PCI port resources, reduce system development complexity and cost, and make users more simple and easy to use and system maintenance work.

Intel's approach to SAS essentially reflects the trend of cloud computing to facilitate convergence of data center devices, and the traditional "divide and conquer" system architecture has been unable to adapt to the rapidly evolving needs of cloud computing. For traditional system architectures, Intel sees not only the SAS, but also its raid practices that fully reflect this convergence trend.

Integrated RAID accelerates server and storage fusion

Looking back over the last two years on the market for servers and storage products, we will find that more and more server devices have storage characteristics and more and more storage devices are becoming more computational power. The blurring between servers and storage has become an unstoppable trend. Like Oracle's launch of Storage server Exadata, HP's ProLiant, Pao Pr2012ns, VCE Alliance Vblock and so on, are the server and storage to merge the typical Representative products.

RAID as a typical storage application, the hardware solutions of traditional raid control cards also face great challenges, and we find that more and more products begin to focus on the integration of the processor to raid. The storage Processor C3500/5500 series, which was launched early in the Intel Embedded division, incorporates the Raid acceleration feature and is used by IBM clustered NAS Systems Sonas, IBM Midrange Storage Systems Storwize V7000, and promise storage systems. In the Intel Next generation processor platform Romley platform, we found that this integrated RAID features more obvious.

Figure IV: Intel Next-generation processor platform Romley will truly provide users with enterprise-class raid operations, with powerful CPUs for enterprise-class raid operations.

In the past, it was thought that this integrated soft RAID solution could only exist in low-cost, low reliability solutions, and as the X86 processor capabilities soared, the processor soft raid approach was already a great system for I/O performance, CPU load, cost, and reliability. Yes, this raid scenario will become an enterprise-class application trend. There is no doubt that this trend is also in line with the cloud of resource centralization, high utilization, low-cost use of demand.

From the current situation of SAS and raid we can see that in the cloud computing era, the data center equipment resources to centralized, high utilization, which makes the data center of servers, storage and other devices gradually break the traditional boundaries of convergence, SAS and RAID integration on the processor platform is the best embodiment of this trend.

(Responsible editor: admin)