Paper Title: Enabling Scalable Ethernet JBOF with a Native NVMe-oF SSD

Paper Abstract: Current NVMe-oF JBOF architectures in enterprise storage systems rely on CPU resources for protocol extension. This limits scalability since expanding the system would quickly drain those resources and reduce performance drastically. One way to solve the problem is to develop a SSD with native NVMe-oF functionality support. It would reduce total cost of ownership and increase scalability by reducing demands on the CPU. One could even eliminate the CPU entirely, replacing it with a simple Ethernet frontend. An Ethernet JBOF Proof-of-Concept prototype offers best-in-class performance and power consumption. It consists of NVMe SSDs with small NVMe-oF capable interposers which emulate native NVMe-oF SSDs and Ethernet switch-based frontends for external connectivity.

Paper Author: Shingo Tanaka, Chief Specialist, Toshiba Memory Corporation

Author Bio: Mr. Tanaka is a chief specialist at Toshiba Memory’s solid state drive division. He focuses on expanding the role and functionality of SSDs within host systems in order to increase both performance and utilization levels. He is currently leading a project to develop a new type of SSD with native network connectivity, and previously led the development of a key-value API Ethernet drive for object storage systems. He has over 15 years of experience in the data storage industry, and holds over 40 patents, either granted or pending. He has given or contributed to presentations at conferences including the USENIX Conference on File and Operating Systems (FAST) and the Non-Volatile Memory Workshop. He earned a MSME degree from the University of Tokyo and was a Visiting Scholar at Stanford.