Paper Title: An NVMe/TCP Software-Defined Platform for Guaranteed QoS

Paper Abstract: Providing QoS guarantees is a major task of service deployments in cloud environments. NVMe over TCP is the latest novel trend in the world of storage, combining the disciplines of storage and networking. Each has its own QoS challenges, and their combination makes it even more complex. In this talk, issues such as head-of-line blocking, differential services, storage overload, and throughput guarantees for the mixed workloads will be discussed. The talk will show how these can be addressed in a software defined storage system - and specifically discuss the separation of NVMe connections over TCP sockets, and a multi-threaded arbitration algorithm to enable differentiated service. With this approach, a data center provider can assure (and charge for) each NVMe/TCP volume with different service guarantees.

Paper Author: Alex Shpiner, System Architect, Lightbits Labs

Author Bio: Alexander Shpiner is a system architect in Lightbits Labs, a startup developing cloud infrastructure including networked storage. From 2013 until 2018 he held a position in the system architecture group of Mellanox Technologies, focusing on network-wise QoS-related features in switches and NICs. In addition, he has 6 years of experience in IDF signal corps, working on various telecommunication projects for the defense industry. He holds a B.Sc. in Computer Engineering and a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering, during which he researched topics in the fields of computer networks: congestion control, switch scheduling, network processors and networks on chip. He also received a Master of Business Administration (MBA) degree from the faculty of Industrial Engineering and Management. All the degrees are completed in the Technion-Israel Institue of Technology. He also co-authored patents and research papers, two of which received the best paper award.