BIG DATA

Chelsio Communications has released its Windows Server 2012 NDK driver for RDMA enabled SMB Direct. Chelsio's high performance storage adapters enable a converged interconnect solution that simultaneously supports a complete suite of networking and storage protocols, as well as Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V for virtualized applications.

Chelsio's Ethernet adapters are capable of true 40Gb line rate operation at 8KB I/O with Windows 2012 SMB-Direct.  Chelsio demonstrated 40Gb operation of the Windows Server 2012 SMB Direct protocol using a Chelsio T5-based iWARP RDMA over Ethernet adapter at the Storage Developer Conference in Santa Clara, CA. The demonstration showed line rate throughput at 8KB I/O size, effectively the highest possible IOPS for SMB Direct over Ethernet-based fabrics.

"Windows Server 2012 provides breakthrough innovations in storage technology," said Thomas Pfenning, partner director SDE, Microsoft.  "We're pleased to see high performance RDMA adapters such as the ones from Chelsio, building on the Windows 2012 Server foundation to bring customers robust and high-performance storage solutions."

"Chelsio's 40Gb iWARP RDMA solution offers a new level of performance and scalability for Windows Server environments," said Kianoosh Naghshineh, president and CEO of Chelsio.  "The offload capability of the adapters enables the deployment of less expensive and power efficient CPUs on the server side, resulting in a more economical and greener virtualized cloud infrastructure.  With the combined support for offloaded Network Direct, iSCSI and FCoE, T5 adapters provide an advanced Windows Server solution, demonstrating the full value of the Windows Server platform"

SMB Direct over iWARP RDMA Demonstration
The demonstration at the Storage Developer Conference consisted of two systems connected via 40Gb Chelsio T580-LP-CR interfaces through a switch. Using the Microsoft sqlio2 utility, Chelsio was able to demonstrate the transfer of data at 40Gbps from the SMB client to SMB server with 8kB blocks and the SMB Direct protocol using iWARP RDMA. More information is available at http://www.chelsio.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/Microsoft-Word-T5-Brief-SNW-Spring-2013-docx.pdf.

RDMA over Ethernet (iWARP RDMA)
RDMA over Ethernet (iWARP) is an industry-standard low latency protocol developed by the IETF.  Since it is built on top of TCP/IP, it is routable and scalable from just a few to thousands of co-located or geographically dispersed endpoints, and is adaptable to any data center topology or speed.  It further can work independently of the DCB capabilities, thereby reducing deployment costs and decoupling the server and switch refresh cycles.  More data at http://www.chelsio.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/iWARP-LAMMPS-and-WRF-40G.pdf.