Talks at SNW Fall 2012 in October will cover SMB Direct, Hyper-V over SMB and SMB 3.0

I have three presentations lined up for the ComputerWorld/SNIA SNW Fall 2012 Conference, scheduled for October 16-19, 2012 in Santa Clara, California. Here are the details for each one, taken from the official event web site.

Industry Perspective: High Throughput File Servers with SMB Direct, Using the Three Flavors of RDMA network adapters
Wednesday, 10/17/2012, 11:40 AM -12:25 PM

In Windows Server 2012, we introduce the “SMB Direct” protocol, which allows file servers to use high throughput/low latency RDMA network interfaces. However, there are three distinct flavors of RDMA, each with their own specific requirements and advantages, their own pros and cons. In this session, we'll look into iWARP, InfiniBand and RoCE, outline the differences between them. We'll also list the specific vendors that offer each technology and provide step-by-step instructions for anyone planning to deploy them. The talk will also include an update on RDMA performance and a customer case study.

Industry Perspective: Hyper-V over SMB: Remote File Storage Support in Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V
Friday, 10/19/2012, 10:20 AM - 11:05 AM

In this session, we cover the Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V support for remote file storage using SMB 3.0. This introduces a new first-class storage option for Hyper-V that is a flexible, easy to use and cost-effective alternative to block storage. We detail the basic requirements for Hyper-V over SMB and outline the specific enhancements to SMB 3.0 to support server application storage, including SMB Transparent Failover, SMB Scale-Out, SMB Multichannel, SMB Direct (SMB over RDMA), SMB Encryption, SMB PowerShell, SMB performance counters and VSS for Remote File Shares. We conclude with a few suggested configurations for Hyper-V over SMB, including both standalone and clustered options. SMB 3.0 is an open protocol family, which is being implemented by several major vendors of enterprise NAS, and by the Samba open-source CIFS/SMB package in Linux and other operating systems.

SNIA Tutorial: SMB Remote File Protocol (including SMB 3.0)
Friday, 10/19/2012, 11:15 AM - 12:00 PM

The SMB protocol has evolved over time from CIFS to SMB1 to SMB2, with implementations by dozens of vendors including most major Operating Systems and NAS solutions. The SMB 3.0 protocol, announced at the SNIA SDC Conference in September 2011, is expected to have its first commercial implementations by Microsoft, NetApp and EMC by the end of 2012 (and potentially more later). This SNIA Tutorial describes the basic architecture of the SMB protocol and basic operations, including connecting to a share, negotiating a dialect, executing operations and disconnecting from a share. The second part of the talk will cover improvements in the version 2.0 of the protocol, including a reduced command set, support for asynchronous operations, compounding of operations, durable and resilient file handles, file leasing and large MTU support. The final part of the talk covers the latest changes in the SMB 3.0 version, including persistent handles (SMB Transparent Failover), active/active clusters (SMB Scale-Out), multiple connections per sessions (SMB Multichannel), support for RDMA protocols (SMB Direct), snapshot-based backups (VSS for Remote File Shares) opportunistic locking of folders (SMB Directory Leasing), and SMB encryption.

If you’re not registered yet, there’s still time. Visit the official web site at https://www.snwusa.com and click on the Register link. I look forward to seeing you there…