NetApp filer

In computer storage, NetApp filer, known also as NetApp Fabric-Attached Storage (FAS), or NetApp's network attached storage (NAS) device are NetApp's offering in the area of storage systems. A FAS functions in an enterprise-class storage area network (SAN) as well as a networked storage appliance. It can serve storage over a network using file-based protocols such as NFS, CIFS, FTP, TFTP, and HTTP. Filers can also serve data over block-based protocols such as Fibre Channel (FC), Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) and iSCSI.[1] NetApp Filers implement their physical storage in large disk arrays.

Most other large storage vendors' filers tend to use commodity computers with an operating system such as Microsoft Windows Storage Server or tuned Linux. NetApp filers use highly customized hardware and the proprietary Data ONTAP operating system, both originally designed by founders David Hitz and James Lau specifically for storage-serving purposes. Data ONTAP is NetApp's internal operating system, specially optimised for storage functions at high and low level. It is booted from FreeBSD as a stand-alone kernel-space module and use some functions of FreeBSD (command interpreter and drivers stack, for example).

All filers have battery-backed NVRAM, which allows them to commit writes to stable storage quickly, without waiting on disks. Early filers connected to external disk enclosures via SCSI, while modern models (as of 2009) use FC and SAS protocol. The disk enclosures (shelves) support FC hard disk drives, as well as parallel ATA, serial ATA and Serial attached SCSI.

Implementers often organize two filers in a high-availability cluster with a private high-speed link, either Fibre Channel, InfiniBand, or 10 Gigabit Ethernet. One can additionally group such clusters together under a single namespace when running in the "cluster mode" of the Data ONTAP 8 operating system.

Internal architecture

NetApp FAS3240-R5

Most NetApp filers consist of customized computers with Intel or AMD processors using PCI. Each Filer has a proprietary NVRAM adapter to log all writes for performance and to play the data log forward in the event of an unplanned shutdown. One can link two filers together as a cluster, which NetApp (as of 2009) refers to using the less ambiguous term "Active/Active".

Data ONTAP OS

The Data ONTAP operating system implements a single proprietary file-system called WAFL. When used for file storage, Data ONTAP is capable of acting as both a NFS server and/or a CIFS server, contingent on licensing and configuration. It is therefore capable of serving files to both Unix-like clients and to Microsoft Windows clients from the same file systems. This makes it possible for Unix and Windows to share files by the use of three security styles: mixed, ntfs, and unix. Data ONTAP supports user, group, and tree-based quotas (referred to as q-trees) and allows for data segregation and management within volumes. Qtrees with the UNIX security style will preserve the standard Unix permission-bits, the NTFS security style will preserve NT ACLs found in the Windows environment, and the mixed security allows the use of both interchangeably (with minor loss of fidelity). Since 2002, all NetApp FAS systems can also work as SAN storage over "block-based" protocols such as FC, iSCSI and FCoE (since 2007).

Hardware

Each filer model comes with a set configuration of processor, RAM and NVRAM, which users cannot expand after purchase. With the exception of some of the entry point storage controllers, the NetApp filers have at least one PCIe-based slot available for additional network, tape and/or disk connections. In June 2008 NetApp announced the Performance Acceleration Module (or PAM) to optimize the performance of workloads which carry out intensive random reads. This optional card goes into a PCIe slot and provides additional memory (or cache) between the disk and the filer RAM/NVRAM, thus improving performance.

Storage

NetApp supports either SATA, Fibre Channel, or SAS disk drives, which it groups into RAID (Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks or Redundant Array of Independent Disks) groups of up to 28 (26 data disks plus 2 parity disks). Multiple RAID groups form an "aggregate"; and within aggregates Data ONTAP operating system sets up "flexible volumes" to actually store data that users can access. An alternative is "Traditional volumes" where one or more RAID groups form a single static volume. Flexible volumes offer the advantage that many of them can be created on a single aggregate and resized at any time. Smaller volumes can then share all of the spindles available to the underlying aggregate. Traditional volumes and aggregates can only be expanded, never contracted. However, Traditional volumes can (theoretically) handle slightly higher I/O throughput than flexible volumes (with the same number of spindles), as they do not have to go through an additional virtualisation layer to talk to the underlying disk.

WAFL File System

WAFL, as a robust versioning filesystem, provides snapshots, which allow end-users to see earlier versions of files in the file system. Snapshots appear in a hidden directory: ~snapshot for Windows (CIFS) or .snapshot for Unix (NFS). Up to 255 snapshots can be made of any traditional or flexible volume. Snapshots are read-only, although Data ONTAP 7 provides additional ability to make writable "virtual clones", based at "WAFL snapshots" technique, as "FlexClones".

Data ONTAP implements snapshots by tracking changes to disk-blocks between snapshot operations. It can set up snapshots in seconds because it only needs to take a copy of the root inode in the filesystem. This differs from the snapshots provided by some other storage vendors in which every block of storage has to be copied, which can take many hours.

SnapMirror

Snapshots form the basis for NetApp disk replication technology SnapMirror, which effectively replicates snapshots between two NetApp filers. Later versions of Data ONTAP introduced cascading replication, where one volume could replicate to another and then another etc. NetApp also offers a backup product based around replicating and storing snapshots, called SnapVault. Open Systems SnapVault allows Windows and UNIX hosts to back up data to a NetApp filer and store any filesystem changes in snapshots.

SyncMirror

Data ONTAP also implements an option called "SyncMirror" where all the RAID groups within an aggregate or traditional volume can be duplicated to another set of hard disks, typically at another site via a Fibre Channel link. NetApp provides a "MetroCluster" option, that uses "SyncMirror" to provide a geo-cluster or active/active cluster between two sites up to 100 km apart.

SnapLock

Other product options include "SnapLock" which implements a "Write Once Read Many" functionality on magnetic disks instead of to optical media, so that data cannot be deleted until its retention period has been reached. SnapLock exists in two modes: compliance and enterprise. The compliance mode was designed to assist organizations in implementing a comprehensive archival solution that meets strict regulatory retention requirements such as dictated by the SEC and several healthcare governing bodies. Records and files committed to WORM storage on a SnapLock Compliance volume cannot be altered or deleted before the expiration of their retention period. Moreover, a SnapLock Compliance volume cannot be destroyed until all data have reached the end of their retention period.

SnapLock Enterprise is geared toward assisting organizations that are more self-regulated and want to have greater flexibility in protecting digital assets with WORM-type data storage. Data stored as WORM on a SnapLock Enterprise volume are protected from alteration or modification with one main difference from SnapLock Compliance: as the files being stored are not for strict regulatory compliance, a SnapLock Enterprise volume can be destroyed by an administrator with root privileges on the FAS system containing the SnapLock Enterprise volume, even if the designed retention period has not yet passed. In both modes, the retention period can be extended, but not shortened, as this is incongruous with the concept of immutability. In addition, NetApp SnapLock data volumes are equipped with a tamper-proof compliance clock that is used as a time reference to block forbidden operations on files, even if the system time is tampered with.

PAM / Flash Cache

NetApp Filer can have PAM ( Performance Accelerate Module ) or Flash Cache (PAM II) which can reduce read latencies and allows the filer to support more read intensive work without adding any further disk to the underlying RAID.

SnapManager Suite

NetApp also offers products for taking application-consistent snapshots by coordinating the application and the NetApp Storage Array. These products support Microsoft Exchange, Microsoft SQL Server, Microsoft Sharepoint, Oracle, SAP and VMware ESX Server data. These products form part of the SnapManager suite.

Previous limitations

Prior to the release of ONTAP 8, individual aggregate sizes were limited to a maximum of 2TB for FAS250 models and 16TB for all other models.

The limitation on aggregate size, coupled with increasing density of disk drives, served to limit the performance of the overall system. NetApp, like most storage vendors, increases overall system performance by parallelizing disk writes to many different spindles (disk drives). Large capacity drives, therefore limit the number of spindles that can be added to a single aggregate, and therefore limit the aggregate performance.

Each aggregate also incurs a storage capacity overhead of approximately 7-11%, depending on the disk type. On systems with many aggregates this can result in lost storage capacity.

However, the overhead comes about due to additional block-checksumming on the disk level as well as usual file system overhead, similar to the overhead in file systems like NTFS or EXT3. Block checksumming helps to insure that data errors at the disk drive level do not result in data loss.

Data ONTAP 8.0 supports a new 64bit aggregate format, which increases the size limit of FlexVolume to approximately 100TB (depending on storage platform) and also increases the size limit of aggregates to more than 100 TB on newer models (depending on storage platform) thus restoring the ability to configure large spindle counts to increase performance and storage efficiency. ()

Model history

This list may omit some models. Information taken from spec.org, netapp.com and storageperformance.org

Model Status Released CPU Main memory NVRAM Raw capacity Benchmark Result
FASServer 400Discontinued Jan 199350 MHz Intel i486? MB 4 MB14 GB?
FASServer 450Discontinued Jan 199450 MHz Intel i486? MB 4 MB14 GB?
FASServer 1300Discontinued Jan 199450 MHz Intel i486? MB 4 MB14 GB?
FASServer 1400Discontinued Jan 199450 MHz Intel i486? MB 4 MB14 GB?
FASServerDiscontinued Jan 199550 MHz Intel i486256 MB 4 MB? GB640
F330Discontinued Sept 199590 MHz Intel Pentium256 MB8 MB117 GB1310
F220Discontinued Feb 199675 MHz Intel Pentium256 MB8 MB? GB754
F540Discontinued June 1996275 MHz DEC Alpha 21064A256 MB8 MB? GB2230
F210Discontinued May 199775 MHz Intel Pentium256 MB8 MB? GB1113
F230Discontinued May 199790 MHz Intel Pentium256 MB8 MB? GB1610
F520Discontinued May 1997275 MHz DEC Alpha 21064A256 MB8 MB? GB2361
F630Discontinued June 1997500 MHz DEC Alpha 21164A512 MB32 MB464 GB4328
F720Discontinued Aug 1998400 MHz DEC Alpha 21164A256 MB8 MB464 GB2691
F740Discontinued Aug 1998400 MHz DEC Alpha 21164A512 MB32 MB928 GB5095
F760Discontinued Aug 1998600 MHz DEC Alpha 21164A1 GB32 MB1.39 TB7750
F85Discontinued Feb 2001256 MB64 MB648 GB
F87Discontinued Dec 20011.13 GHz Intel P3256 MB64 MB576 GB
F810Discontinued Dec 2001733 MHz Intel P3 Coppermine512 MB128 MB1.5 TB4967
F820Discontinued Dec 2000733 MHz Intel P3 Coppermine1 GB128 MB3 TB8350
F825Discontinued Aug 2002733 MHz Intel P3 Coppermine1 GB128 MB3 TB8062
F840Discontinued Aug/Dec? 2000733 MHz Intel P3 Coppermine3 GB128 MB6 TB11873
F880Discontinued July 2001Dual 733 MHz Intel P3 Coppermine3 GB128 MB9 TB17531
FAS920Discontinued May 20042.0 GHz Intel P4 Xeon2 GB256 MB7 TB13460
FAS940Discontinued Aug 20021.8 GHz Intel P4 Xeon3 GB256 MB14 TB17419
FAS960Discontinued Aug 2002Dual 2.2 GHz Intel P4 Xeon6 GB256 MB28 TB25135
FAS980Discontinued Jan 2004Dual 2.8 GHz Intel P4 Xeon MP 2 MB L38 GB512 MB50 TB36036
FAS250EOA 11/08 Jan 2004600 MHz Broadcom BCM1250 dual core MIPS512 MB64 MB4 TB
FAS270EOA 11/08 Jan 2004650 MHz Broadcom BCM1250 dual core MIPS1 GB128 MB16 TB13620*
FAS2020EOA 8/12 June 20072.2 GHz Mobile Celeron1 GB128 MB68 TB
FAS2040EOA 8/12 Sept 20091.66 GHz Intel Xeon4 GB512 MB136 TB
FAS2050EOA 5/11 June 20072.2 GHz Mobile Celeron2 GB256 MB104 TB20027*
FAS2220EOA 3/15 June 20121.73 GHz Dual Core Intel Xeon C35286 GB768 MB180 TB
FAS2240EOA 3/15 November 20111.73 GHz Dual Core Intel Xeon C35286 GB768 MB 432 TB38000
FAS2520 June 20141.73 GHz Dual Core Intel Xeon C352818 GB2 GB 336 TB
FAS2552 June 20141.73 GHz Dual Core Intel Xeon C352818 GB2 GB 518 TB
FAS2554 June 20141.73 GHz Dual Core Intel Xeon C352818 GB2 GB 576 TB
FAS3020EOA 4/09 May 20052.8 GHz Intel Xeon2 GB512 MB84 TB34089*
FAS3040EOA 4/09 Feb 2007Dual 2.4 GHz AMD Opteron 250 4 GB512 MB336 TB60038*
FAS3050Discontinued May 2005Dual 2.8 GHz Intel Xeon4 GB512 MB168 TB47927*
FAS3070EOA 4/09 Nov 2006Dual 1.8 GHz AMD dual core Opteron8 GB512 MB504 TB85615*
FAS3140EOA 2/12 June 2008Single 2.4 GHz AMD Opteron Dual Core 22164 GB512 MB420 TBSFS200840109*
FAS3160EOA 2/12 Dual 2.6 GHz AMD Opteron Dual Core 22188 GB2 GB672 TBSFS200860409*
FAS3170EOA 2/12 June 2008Dual 2.6 GHz AMD Opteron Dual Core 221816 GB2 GB840 TBSFS97_R1137306*
FAS3210EOA 11/13 Nov 2010Single 2.3 GHz Intel Xeon(tm) Processor (E5220)8 GB2 GB480 TBSFS200864292
FAS3220EOA 12/14 Nov 2012Single 2.3 GHz Intel Xeon(tm) Quad Processor (L5410)24 GB3.2GB1.44 PB????
FAS3240EOA 11/13 Nov 2010Quad 2.33 GHz Intel Xeon(tm) Processor (Harpertown)16 GB2 GB1.20 PB????
FAS3250EOA 12/14 Nov 2012Dual 2.33 GHz Intel Xeon(tm) Processor L541040 GB4 GB2.16 PBSFS2008100922
FAS3270EOA 11/13 Nov 2010Dual 3.0 GHz Intel Xeon(tm) Processor (E5240)40 GB4 GB1.92 PBSFS2008101183
FAS6030EOA 6/09 Mar 2006Dual 2.6 GHz AMD Opteron32 GB512 MB840 TBSFS97_R1100295*
FAS6040EOA 3/12 Dec 20072.6 GHz AMD dual core Opteron16 GB512 MB840 TB
FAS6070EOA 6/09 Mar 2006Quad 2.6 GHz AMD Opteron64 GB2 GB1.008 PB136048*
FAS6080EOA 3/12 Dec 20074 to 8 2.6 GHz AMD dual core Opteron64 GB4 GB1.176 PBSFS2008120011*
FAS6080 SFS97_R1164408*
FAS6210EOA 11/13 Nov 20102x 2.27 GHz Intel Xeon(tm) Processor E552048 GB8 GB2.40 PB
FAS6220EOA 3/15 Feb 20132x 64-bit 4-core Intel(R) Xeon(R) Processor E552096 GB8 GB4.80 PB
FAS6240EOA 11/13 Nov 20102x 2.53 GHz Intel Xeon(tm) Processor E554096 GB8 GB2.88 PBSFS2008190675
FAS6240 SFS20081512784*
FAS6240 SPC-1 IOPS250,039.67*
FAS6250EOA 3/15 Feb 20132x 64-bit 4-core144 GB8 GB5.76 PB
FAS6280EOA 11/13 Nov 20102x 2.93 GHz Intel Xeon(tm) Processor X5670192 GB8 GB2.88 PB
FAS6290EOA 3/15 Feb 20132x 64-bit 6-core192 GB8 GB5.76 PB
FAS8020 Mar 20141 x Intel Xeon CPU E5-2620 @ 2.00GHz24 GB8 GB1.92 PBSFS2008110281
FAS8040 Mar 20141 x 64-bit 8-core 2.10 GHz64 GB16 GB2.88 PB
FAS8060 Mar 20142 x 64-bit 8-core 2.10 GHz E5-2658128 GB16 GB4.80 PB
FAS8080EX Jun 20142 x 64-bit 10-core 2.80 GHz256 GB32 GB8.64 PBSPC-1 IOPS685,281.71*
Model Status Released CPU Main memory NVRAM Raw capacity Benchmark Result

EOA = End of Availability

SPECsfs with "*" is clustered result. SPECsfs performed include SPECsfs93, SPECsfs97, SPECsfs97_R1 and SPECsfs2008. Results of different benchmark versions are not comparable.

See also

References

  1. ↑ Nabrzyski, Jarek; Schopf, Jennifer M.; Węglarz, Jan (2004). Grid Resource Management: State of the Art and Future Trends. Springer. p. 342. ISBN 978-1-4020-7575-9. Retrieved 11 June 2012.

External links

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