Re: [RFC PATCH 00/28] INFINIBAND NETWORK BLOCK DEVICE (IBNBD)

[Johannes Thumshirn <jthumshirn@suse.de>]

On Fri, Mar 24, 2017 at 11:45:15AM +0100, Jack Wang wrote:
> From: Jack Wang <jinpu.wang@profitbricks.com>
> 
> This series introduces IBNBD/IBTRS kernel modules.
> 
> IBNBD (InfiniBand network block device) allows for an RDMA transfer of block IO
> over InfiniBand network. The driver presents itself as a block device on client
> side and transmits the block requests in a zero-copy fashion to the server-side
> via InfiniBand. The server part of the driver converts the incoming buffers back
> into BIOs and hands them down to the underlying block device. As soon as IO
> responses come back from the drive, they are being transmitted back to the
> client.
> 
> We design and implement this solution based on our need for Cloud Computing,
> the key features are:
> - High throughput and low latency due to:
> 1) Only two rdma messages per IO
> 2) Simplified client side server memory management
> 3) Eliminated SCSI sublayer
> - Simple configuration and handling
> 1) Server side is completely passive: volumes do not need to be
> explicitly exported
> 2) Only IB port GID and device path needed on client side to map
> a block device
> 3) A device can be remapped automatically i.e. after storage
> reboot
> - Pinning of IO-related processing to the CPU of the producer
> 
> For usage please refer to Documentation/IBNBD.txt in later patch.
> My colleague Danil Kpnis presents IBNBD in Vault-2017 about our design/feature/
> tradeoff/performance:
> 
> http://events.linuxfoundation.org/sites/events/files/slides/IBNBD-Vault-2017.pdf
> 

Hi Jack,

Sorry to ask (I haven't attented the Vault presentation) but why can't you use
NVMe over Fabrics in your environment? From what I see in your presentation
and cover letter, it provides all you need and is in fact a standard Linux and
Windows already have implemented.

Thanks,
	Johannes
-- 
Johannes Thumshirn                                          Storage
jthumshirn@suse.de                                +49 911 74053 689
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