Wednesday, November 28, 2018

Today we continue discussing the best practice from storage engineering:
111) Memory configuration: In a cluster environment, most of the nodes are commodity. Typically, they have reasonable memory. However, the amount of storage data that can be processed by a node depends on fitting the corresponding data structures in memory. The larger the memory, the higher the capability of the server component in the control path. Therefore, there must be some choice of memory versus capability in the overall topology of the server so that it can be recommended to customers.
112) Cpu Configuration: Typically, VMs added as nodes to storage cluster come in T-shirt size configurations with the number of CPUs and the memory configuration defined for each T-shirt size. There is no restriction for the storage server to be deployed in a container or a single Virtual Machine. And since the virtualization of the compute makes it harder to tell the scale up of the host, the general rule of thumb has been more the better. This does not need to be so and a certain configuration may provide the best advantage. Again, the choice and the recommendation must be conveyed to the customer.
113) Serverless Computing: Many functions of a storage server/product are written in the form of microservices or perhaps as components within layers if they are not separable. However, the notion of modularity can be taken in the form of serverless computing so that the lease on named compute servers does not affect the storage server.
114) Expansion: Although some configurations may be optimal, the storage server must be flexible to what the end user want as configuration for the system resources. Availability of flash storage and its configuration via external additions to the hardware is a special case. But upgrading the storage server from one hardware to another must be permitted.
115) Upgrade scenarios : As with any other product, a storage server also has similar concerns for changes to data structures or requests/responses. While it is important for each feature to be backward compatible, it is also important to have a design which can introduce flexibility without encumberance.

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