Ask The Expert – Isilon’s New Releases: IsilonSD Edge, OneFS.NEXT and CloudPools

Hello Sleutze,

The data from Edge to Core or from Core to Edge has to be transferred using SyncIQ policies. You need to setup the SyncIQ policies.

Thanks

kt

Hi,

will OneFS.NEXT be capable of a real "oneclick-Failover" in which quotas and shares are replicated without EMC Arbitrator or Superna Eyeglass?

-- sluetze

Hi,

How is data Transfer from the Edge to the core (and back) implemented? Do i have to schedule SyncIQs or ist this a continious process? Does all "at the edge" requested data get there fully automated? Or are there manual steps to do?

-- sluetze

mn3umonic wrote: Hi Carlilek, Please say more. Are you looking at datacenter scale deployment and with which non-standard typed of HW are you interested? 36TB managed capacity are intended primarily for  Edge location deployments.

Yes, I'd be looking at datacenter scale deployment.

I currently run a 5PB 70 node cluster (which is extraordinarily heterogenous) with a 3PB 10 node HD cluster for backups in another datacenter. That cluster serves SMB and NFSv3, authenticated against LDAP and AD, to all of the desktops, laptops, and servers in the building (> 500 end users, probably around 1500-2000 clients altogether) as well as providing the primary NFS storage for our HPC compute cluster (5000 cores). We automount Linux home directories stored in this Isilon cluster.

Historically and currently, Isilon uses insufficient CPUs for larger scale deployments. When so much relies on CPU in a cluster, that will become the bottleneck pretty quickly. We have to run most of our storage jobs (e.g. Multiscan, Smartpools, etc.) after hours because they will contend for CPU with clients. We also run the risk of exhausting the NFS RPC threads available per node due to insufficient CPU, which can cause HPC cluster jobs to fail.

Isilon appliances are also inflexible in terms of memory allocation. We would like to be able to have significantly more than 256GB of RAM in nodes in order to have more caching (typical cached data age for us is ~1hr.)

More options in terms of drive layout is also highly appealing. Being able to have fully enabled L3 (or GNA) from SSDs in NL class nodes (ie 6TB drives + 1 or 2 SSD) would simplify our configurations.

The networking is also a big issue. Isilon has been stuck at 10GbE for a long time. In order to serve our HPC cluster better (which is all 10GbE clients at a 4:1 oversubscription to ToR), I would like to see much faster networking options available in the Isilon, particularly 50GbE and 100GbE. This has recently become more practical since the OneFS has improved to the point where the nodes can actually saturate the 10GbE links they have (a very recent development).

Back end networking improvements over the currently rather dated QDR IB would also help. With an SDS solution like this, we wouldn't be stuck with ancient back end networking for older nodes, because we could just replace the hardware in the nodes.

This is really the promise of the whole thing, not being stuck with older hardware because of the need to replace entire pools at once. If we were to discover that a pool of nodes had insufficient RAM, we could just add it rather than calling EMC and spending ludicrous amounts of money and time to get it changed (yes, we've done this, and it is completely ludicrous). If we decide that our (relatively) cheap 'n' deep nodes really do need an SSD or two, we could add it, again without the absolutely absurd cost that Isilon charges for upgrading a node and without the need to remove an HDD to make this work.

Ultimately, we'd rather see a SDS option that didn't require VMware so that we can build some of these wildly performing nodes ourselves without the hypervisor overhead, but I can understand why Isilon is starting there.

--Ken

I'm not sure I understand how that is different from the current state (I mean, I know the rollback is new, which is really sweet), but the rolling upgrade is already a thing.

They just use SMB3 Multichannel to keep the Clients connected. On NFS side you have to use connectionless versions of the protocol.

We are continuing to improve group change times and overall upgrade reliability in OneFS. We can provide further details after GA.

There are a couple differences going forward:

1. You won't have to wonder if your particular upgrade supports a rolling upgrade (remember the old "major" vs "minor" and the rolling upgrade support matrix?) After OneFS.NEXT every supported upgrade will be rolling upgrade compatible.

2. The addition of support for SMB3 CA shares is exciting for the Windows customers.

3. We've added additional administrative controls that you can leverage to manage the upgrade experience for your environment as requested by our customers.

DISCLAIMER:
This product is currently not generally available.  The layout, design and features may be revised or removed prior to becoming generally available

That'll work great for XP and 7.

When interviewing customers who need the rollback feature all of them agreed a rollback in their production environment is something that would only be performed in case of emergency. As such the ability to rollback non disruptively was considered less important that the ability to rollback at all. In the initial release we are staying cautious and we will require a simultaneous reboot to complete the rollback. The process is very similar to an upgrade with simultaneous reboot.

DISCLAIMER:
This product is currently not generally available.  The layout, design and features may be revised or removed prior to becoming generally available

Regarding configuration changes during upgrade and rollback. To be truly "non-disruptive" we have to maintain the ability for an administrator to manage their environment during the upgrade process, including configuration changes, adding and removing shares, editing share permissions, etc. Changes to configurations that are supported on the old release will be maintained during the rollback. Obviously if you configure something that is not supported on the old release and you rollback those configuration changes will not be maintained.

DISCLAIMER:
This product is currently not generally available.  The layout, design and features may be revised or removed prior to becoming generally available

Yes, IsilonSD Edge will give you the same experience you get with Isilon appliances.

Hi folks, I just want to let you know that we've included a video on the description of this thread from Ashish Palekar, Sr. Director, Isilon Product Management, EMC², where he discusses the history behind Data Lake 2.0, the new features, and the customer benefits of the expanded data lake.

We’ll welcome your questions based on the video content.

Anissa  ,

Are there any time limitations for commit/rollback of a OneFS.NEXT upgrade? OR can a cluster be rolled back at any time?