Investigating Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) over TCP (tSAS) UCCS Master’s Project Deepti Reddy

Outline of the Talk Introduction to tSAS and related technology Motivation and Challenges tSAS Design Performance Evaluation of a Mock Application Lessons Learnt and Future Directions Conclusion 11/3/2011 tSAS/sreddy

SCSI vs SAS SCSI (Small Computer System Interface) The SCSI protocol is an application layer storage protocol.   It's a standard for connecting peripherals to your computer via a standard hardware interface, which uses standard SCSI commands. SAS (Serial Attached SCSI) SAS is the successor of SCSI technology Initially introduced at 3Gb/s in 2004 Currently, supports 6Gb/s 12Gbps by 2012 Significantly increased the available bandwidth offered by legacy SCSI storage systems. Use of expanders increases the scalability over legacy SCSI 11/3/2011 tSAS/sreddy

SCSI vs SAS SCSI SAS Topology Parallel Bus Serial Bus Reduces Noise (Better signal integrity) Speed 3.2 Gbps 3 Gbps, 6Gbps, 12Gbps Distance 1 to 12 meters 8 meters Number of Targets 14 devices 128 expanders. > 16,000 with cascaded expanders Devices SCSI only SAS & SATA Used widely in Data Centers today Connectivity Single Port Dual Port Fail-over/fail-back Drive Form Factor 3.5” 2.5” Cost Low Medium Need to have font size >=18 for easy viewing 11/3/2011 tSAS/sreddy

iSCSI iSCSI protocol describes a means of transporting of the SCSI packets over TCP/IP The iSCSI specification is revised and updated by the Internet Engineering task Force (IEFT). Work by S. Aiken, D. Grunwald, A. Pleszkun and J. Willeke shows the performance of a commercial iSCSI software implementation compared quite favorably with fibrechannel [7] Make diagram as big as possible . iSCSI protocol layering model 11/3/2011 tSAS/sreddy

Typical SAS Topology X X X X SAS CONTROLLER (HOST BUS ADAPTER) ~8m Driver SAS CONTROLLER (HOST BUS ADAPTER) ~8m X X X - DISK DRIVES X - EXPANDERS 11/3/2011 tSAS/sreddy

Motivation & Challenges Overcome the distance and scalability limitations of traditional Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) by using tSAS. Like iSCSI, tSAS takes advantage of existing internet infrastructure, internet management facilities as well as addresses distance limitations Provide research results for future industry specification for tSAS and iSCSI. 11/3/2011 tSAS/sreddy

Related Work Michael Ko’s patent at IBM Research-Almaden on Serial Attached SCSI over Ethernet proposes a very similar solution to the tSAS solution provided in this project. iSCSI specification (SCSI over TCP) itself is similar to a tSAS solution (SAS over TCP). The iSCSI solution can be heavily leveraged for a tSAS solution. The Fibre Channel over TCP/IP specification also can be leveraged to design and implement a tSAS solution. 11/3/2011 tSAS/sreddy

tSAS Topology X - TCP link - SAS link X - DISK DRIVES - EXPANDERS tSAS SCSI Driver tSAS HBA SCSI Driver tSAS CONTROLLER/HBA X - TCP link - DISK DRIVES - SAS link X - EXPANDERS 11/3/2011 tSAS/sreddy

tSAS Topology X - TCP link - SAS link X - DISK DRIVES - EXPANDERS tSAS SCSI Driver tSAS HBA SCSI Driver tSAS CONTROLLER/HBA X - TCP link - DISK DRIVES - SAS link X - EXPANDERS 11/3/2011 tSAS/sreddy

Goals of the project Investigate how tSAS can be implemented Design and develop a mock tSAS application Write a client program using C/C++ that sends a set of tSAS commands to a server. Write a server program using C/C++ that receives a set of tSAS commands, processes them and responds to the client with tSAS responses. Evaluate the tSAS solution and compare with a mock iSCSI client/server application. 11/3/2011 tSAS/sreddy

Software and Hardware solutions for tSAS implementations Software based tSAS solution Cheaper than a hardware based solution All tSAS processing is done by the processor and TCP/IP operations are also executed by the CPU NIC is merely an interface to the network TCP Offload Engine (TOE) solution NICs with integrated TOEs have hardware built into the card that allows the TCP/IP processing to be done at the interface Hardware based tSAS solution In a hardware-based tSAS environment, the initiator and target machines contain a host bus adapter (HBA) that is responsible for both TCP/IP and tSAS processing 11/3/2011 tSAS/sreddy

tSAS Approach The tSAS Request is initially sent by the tSAS Initiator to the tSAS Target over TCP. The tSAS Target strips off the TCP header and sends the SAS frames using the SAS Initiator block on the tSAS Target to the SAS expander/drive. The SAS expander/drive sends SAS frames to the tSAS Target. Finally, the tSAS Target embeds the SAS frames received from the expander/drive over TCP and sends it to the tSAS Initiator. 11/3/2011 tSAS/sreddy

tSAS Message Format Ethernet Header IP Header TCP Header tSAS Header Data Ethernet Trailer TCP Segment IP Datagram Ethernet Frame The above shows how a legacy SAS header and data are embedded in an Ethernet frame. iSCSI uses the same approach where the iSCSI header and data are encapsulated in an Ethernet frame. 11/3/2011 tSAS/sreddy

tSAS Approach SAS Expander tSAS Target tSAS Initiator tSAS Request Open Address Frame Open Accept SAS/SSP Request Frame Xfer Rdy Frame tSAS Xfer Rdy Frame . Data Frame . Data Frame Data Frame Data Frame SSP Response Frame tSAS Response Frame The above diagram shows a typical tSAS (SSP Write ) Request & Response sequence diagram. iSCSI uses a similar approach where the back-end between the iSCSI target and SCSI drives uses the legacy SCSI protocol. tSAS/sreddy 11/3/2011

tSAS Approach Primitives Primitives are special 8b/10b encoded characters that are used as frame delimiters, for out of band signaling, control sequencing in SAS Most primitives can be conveniently ignored on the tSAS side except a few such as Broadcast primitives used to initiate discovery SAS primitive can be encapsulated in an Ethernet frame Discovery Discovery in tSAS will be similar to SAS and will be accomplished by sending Serial management protocol (SMP) commands over TCP to the initiators and expanders downstream to learn the topology. Will show a SAS Trace with READ commands to show the audience what primitives look like on the wire. 11/3/2011 tSAS/sreddy

tSAS Approach SAS Primitives 11/3/2011 tSAS/sreddy

SMP Initiator on Expander tSAS Approach SMP Initiator on Expander SMP Target on Expander tSAS Client SMP Request Open Address Frame Open Accept SMP Request SMP Response Make the font bigger at least 18pt Close SMP Response SMP Request & Response Sequence Diagram 11/3/2011 tSAS/sreddy

Test benches used for performance calculations tSAS and iSCSI Mock Application The client application and server application run on two different Windows machines connected using a NetGear ProSafe Gigabit Switch Intel Core 2 Duo CPU 2.53 GHz, 3.45 GB RAM Intel 82567LM Gigabit Network Adapter Client makes Read/Write requests and the server processes and responds to requests made by the Client Windows Machine A (Running Client App) Windows Machine B (Running Server App) NetGear Switch 11/3/2011 tSAS/sreddy

Test benches used for performance calculations Legacy SAS A 6 Gbps SAS Host Bus Adapter in a PCIe slot of a Super Micro server A 6 Gbps SAS target (Seagate SAS drive) connected to the Host Bus Adapter IOMeter in Windows and VDBench in RHEL used to generate Read/Write IOs and measure performance IOMeter and VDBench are IO generator tools used to measure IO performance of a storage system A LeCroy SAS Protocol Analyzer placed between the HBA and the SAS Target 11/3/2011 tSAS/sreddy

Test benches used for performance calculations Driver SAS CONTROLLER (HOST BUS ADAPTER) SAS Protocol Analyzer X SAS Protocol Analyzer - SAS DISK DRIVE X - EXPANDER 11/3/2011 tSAS/sreddy

Test benches used for performance calculations Legacy iSCSI Two windows machines/servers were used connected using a NetGear ProSafe Gigabit Switch On one machine the StarWind iSCSi Initiator was running On another machine, the KernSafe iSCSi target software was used to create a iSCSI target IOMeter was used to send Read/Write requests from the iSCSI Initiator to the iSCSI Target and measure performance Wireshark used to capture Network Traffic iSCSI Initiator on Windows Machine A iSCSI Target on Windows Machine B NetGear Switch 11/3/2011 tSAS/sreddy

tSAS vs iSCSI Mock Application at 10 Mbps 11/3/2011 tSAS/sreddy

tSAS vs iSCSI Mock Application at 100 Mbps 11/3/2011 tSAS/sreddy

tSAS vs iSCSI Mock Application at 1 Gbps 11/3/2011 tSAS/sreddy

tSAS 512K Read at 10 Mbps, 100 Mbps and 1 Gbps 11/3/2011 tSAS/sreddy

Lessons Learnt/Difficulties encountered Using several iSCSI Target Softwares that were not licensed/purchased made it challenging since several features were either not supported or did not work on the unlicensed version. Even using KernSafe iSCSI target, I was not able to create a iSCSI RamDisk Target or a iSCSI Hard disk target. I used a USB Flash drive as the iSCSI target Subtracted the delay at the Flash Drive from the iSCSI IOMeter performance results Delay of Flash Drive calculated by running IOMeter to the SCSI device on the target machine 11/3/2011 tSAS/sreddy

Lessons Learnt/Difficulties encountered Jumbo frames The NetGear ProSafe switch is a Gigabit switch that supports Jumbo Frames. However, I could not get jumbo frames to work since the Network Adapter on the Windows machines did not support Jumbo frames One needs cabling and adapters as well that support Jumbo frames to use a switch that supports Jumbo frames Understanding the SAS protocol and tools is very involved Took substantial time to understand and learn the workings of SAS as well as the tools 11/3/2011 tSAS/sreddy

Future Work More data points The tSAS mock application can be run using a faster switch with connection rates greater than 1 Gbps to get more data points (40G/100G Ethernet) Piggybacking Response frames are piggybacked with the last DATA frame or a DATA frame is piggy backed with a request frame. This would increase performance Jumbo frames Can be used to increase the amount of DATA that is passed from the initiator and target per Ethernet packet improving the performance results. The Storage Associations can be motivated with similar work to fuel the conception of a tSAS specification tSAS code can be implemented in a SAS HBA and performance can be measured using this direct implementation 11/3/2011 tSAS/sreddy

Conclusion tSAS is a viable solution tSAS will be faster than a similar iSCSI implementation Overhead in tSAS smaller than in iSCSI Request, Response and Transfer Ready frames in tSAS smaller than Request, Response and Ready to Transfer frames in iSCSI Back-end of tSAS will be legacy SAS tSAS more visibly faster at larger transfer sizes than iSCSI tSAS more reliable at smaller transfer sizes at 10 Mbps, 100 Mbps and 1 Gbps due to higher TCP retransmission rate at larger sizes tSAS hardware solution would be the fastest vs a software solution tSAS would perform better at smaller transfer sizes tSAS will overcome the distance limitation of legacy SAS For the 2nd bullet item, are you listing all the reasons? Or they are independent facts? 11/3/2011 tSAS/sreddy

References   [1] T10/1760-D Information Technology – Serial Attached SCSI – 2 (SAS-2), T10, 18 April 2009, Available from http://www.t10.org/drafts.htm#SCSI3_SAS [2] Harry Mason, Serial attached SCSI Establishes its Position in the Enterprise, LSI Corporation, available from http://www.scsita.org/aboutscsi/sas/6GbpsSAS.pdf [3] J Satran, K Meth, C. Sapuntzakis, M. Chadalapka, E. Zeidner, RFC 3720 Internet Small Computer Systems Interface (iSCSI) Specification IETF, April 2004, available from http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc3720.txt [4] Cai, Y.; Fang, L.; Ratemo, R.; Liu, J.; Gross, K.; Kozma, M.; A test case for 3Gbps serial attached SCSI (SAS) Test Conference, 2005. Proceedings. ITC 2005. IEEE International, February 2006, available from http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpls/abs_all.jsp?arnumber=1584027 11/3/2011 tSAS/sreddy

References [6] Kalmath Meth, Julian Satran,   [6] Kalmath Meth, Julian Satran, Design of the iSCSI Protocol, Mass Storage Systems and Technologies, 2003. (MSST 2003). Proceedings. 20th IEEE/11th NASA Goddard Conference on Mass Storage Systems and Technologies, April 2003, available from http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpls/abs_all.jsp?arnumber=1194848&tag=1 [7] Stephen Aiken, Dirk Grunwald, Andrew R. Pleszkun, Jesse Willeke, A Performance Analysis of the iSCSI Protocol 20th IEEE/11th NASA Goddard Conference on Mass Storage Systems and Technologies, 2003, available from http://www.storageconference.org/2003/papers/20-Aikens-Performance.pdf [8] M. Rajagopal, E. Rodriguez, R. Weber, RFC 3821 Fibre Channel over TCP/IP (FCIP) standard, IETF, July 2004, available from http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc3821 [9] BLi Bigang, Shu Jiwu, Zheng Weimin, SCSI Target Simulator Based on FC and IP Protocols in TH-MSNS* Department of Computer Science and Technology, Tsinghua University, Beijing China, 2005 11/3/2011 tSAS/sreddy

References   [10] S. Chaitanya, K. Butler, A. Sivasubramaniam, P. McDaniel, M. Vilayannur,   Design, Implementation and Evaluation of Security in iSCSI-based Network Storage Systems, StorageSS '06 Proceedings of the second ACM workshop on Storage security and survivability, October 2006, available from http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1179564 [11] 1Gbps and 10Gbps Ethernet Server Scalability, NetApp, available fromhttp://partners.netapp.com/go/techontap/matl/downloads/redhat- neterion_10g.pdf [12] Michael A. Ko, LAYERING SERIAL ATTACHED SMALL COMPUTER SYSTEM INTERFACE (SAS) vOVER ETHERNET, United States Patent Application 20080228897, 09/18/2008 available from http://www.faqs.org/patents/app/20080228897 [13] SCSI Primary Commands - 4 (SPC-4), Revision 31, T10, 2011/06/13, available from http://www.t10.org/members/w_spc4.htm [14] Broadcom iSCSI HBA FAQ available from http://www.broadcom.com/collateral/faq/iSCSI-FAQ100-R.pdf 11/3/2011 tSAS/sreddy