Data centers and hardware file systems
posted by Loring Wirbel on 07/06/2009 | comments 3
The networked client-server market has been in such doldrums of late, this blog has focused primarily on imaging, mil-aero, and similar verticals. But that hardly means there is little new under the sun, no pun intended. The UK’s notorious online IT source, The Register, tells us of BlueArc’s latest concepts for accelerating both OS and file system, in its new Mercury line using Stratix III FPGAs for Network-Attached Storage (NAS) acceleration.
Pay close attention to the details, because this is not the usual case of an FPGA accelerating the Fibre Channel or Infiniband access channel. Instead, BlueArc is using hardware to streamline access to the file system, promoting its SiliconFS. It’s not that hardware acceleration of a file system is a new concept – Sun Microsystems Inc. (aka Oracle Corp.) has provided mid-life kickers to its Network File System in the past through the use of ASIC-based add-in boards. But as demands for faster, smaller, and more power-efficient data centers increase as the recession wanes, the battle between NAS, Storage Area Networks (SAN), and other topological alternatives for speeding storage access, will benefit by placing more and more operating-system and file-system protocols in hardware. Perfect place for an FPGA.
Reader Comments
at 7/6/2009 12:55:56 PM, Andy T said:
I think the major bottleneck is in the OS, as you've alluded Loring, not the file system protocols. Windows 7 is now 2.5GB of bloatware, with not much more perceived functionality than 3.1 had. That said, I'd welcome the first FPGA-based overlords to completely eliminate a software-based OS, possibly Microsoft itself.
at 7/6/2009 3:21:09 PM, Justin said:
I think Andy is kind of missing the point here. We're not talking about client operating systems like Windows 7 or 3.1 here. In fact, even the clients for a silicon file system like BlueArc's are servers running Linux, UNIX, or Windows server 200X. By putting the file system on FPGAs, they have already removed the CPU as the bottleneck because the BlueArc OS is not in the NFS data path.
at 7/7/2009 4:34:08 PM, Justin said:
Sorry, in my last post I meant to mention that the operating systems used by NAS appliances like BlueArc's and their competitors are small, efficient, secure, purpose built operating systems. They are generally in the 100 Megabyte range. Bloat is not the problem with that kind of operating system, regardless of whether it runs on a CPU or in the hardware.
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