Paper Title: InfiniBand Networked Flash Storage

Paper Abstract: Many connection technologies exist for Flash Storage, including Ethernet, Fibre Channel, PCI Express, and InfiniBand. This talk will focus on InfiniBand. Data Centers want to share storage readily among multiple compute nodes and be able to perform clustering, failover, and other system-wide operations. They thus need networked storage rather than the traditional direct-attached variety. However, networked storage introduces new tradeoffs in terms of cost, complexity, speed, latency, and other factors. Flash storage makes design even more difficult because of its higher bandwidth and performance, thus placing more strain on switches and adapters. How does InfiniBand solve the challenges of Flash Storage? Higher-speed versions are available, as well as lower-latency extensions such as Remote Direct Memory Access (RDMA) and iSCSI extensions for RDMA (iSER). Typical issues governing selection include familiarity with particular approaches, existing use, latency and performance requirements, scalability, ecosystem (including management tools), and cost. This talk will cover them all.

Paper Author: Motti Beck, Director Enterprise Market Develop, Mellanox

Author Bio: Motti Beck is Sr. Director of Marketing, EDC market segment at Mellanox Technologies, Inc. Before joining Mellanox, Motti was a founder of several start-up companies including BindKey Technologies that was acquired by DuPont Photomask (today Toppan Printing Company LTD) and Butterfly Communications that was acquired by Texas Instrument. Prior to that he was a Business Unit Director at National Semiconductors. Motti hold B.Sc in computer engineering from the Technion - Israel Institute of Technology.