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3634
March 9th, 2012 07:00
SMB 2.2 or 3.0? and ReFS
I was in a meeting with a customer the other day and he brought up ReFS (Resiliant File System), the file system that is being introduced with Windows 8. His question was around our integration, as we were talking about leveraging RepMan for Exchange etc... So, I was caught off guard had not really done my homework on that one.
So my question is this, is anyone aware of any "gotcha's"? I cannot believe that there will be any impact with existing products that we have, which is what I told him. As Microsoft does a good job, for the most part, of managing backward compatability.
Second question, are there any new features in this ReFS that we are going to leverage?
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duckew
2 Intern
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126 Posts
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March 9th, 2012 08:00
Byrd,
I found this discussion on the community check it out and see if it helps
https://community.emc.com/docs/DOC-12830
Regards
Bill
pgaljan
61 Posts
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March 9th, 2012 10:00
With the VNX, EMC plans broad support for SMB3 when it releases along with Windows Server 8. You can contact me offline for the NDA details.
The best reference I’ve found for reFS is here . I don’t know what, if any, effort EMC will need to go through in order to support it. It is after all just a file system that the OS lays on top of LUN presented by the array. There may be some collateral impact and planning necessary, as they’ve implemented background scanning to battle bit rot. We’ll need to characterize the performance profile of that ongoing process to ensure that it’s accounted for. It does appear that VSS is supported with reFS, so it just might be that the effort we have will be more around education than integration.
Tx1_f906d5
21 Posts
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March 9th, 2012 10:00
Well there seem to be two asks: one for SMB and one for ReFS.
On the SMB side, at least in the Subject, it sounds like there's an ask for clarification on SMB naming? I'll assume so. The answer is that until recently the name for the feature set that would add resiliency and persistence to the SMB stack was called SMB 2.2. I say, until recently, because just within about the last month, SMB 2.2 naming has changed to SMB 3.0. So it's effectively the same thing. This will bring enhancements to the SMB stack on both Windows 8 Client and Windows 8 Server as well as any SMB 3.0 compliant fileshare system (think Unified as an example). It also bring some some technological advancements that Microsoft have already discussed, such as RDMA which will provide enhance performance, as it offloads a lot of the traditional overheads of using an Ethernet stack.
On the ReFS side, EMC is actively looking at this technology. Again, Microsoft have announced this as a new feature in Windows 8, and it brings value to a customer deployment. It does have some side effects that we are investigating, and those product groups that might be affected as looking at supportability.
It would be inappropriate to comment at this time regarding support as Windows 8 is not a GA product at this time. However, EMC is a very active partner in the Windows 8 Readiness program, and all of our teams are focused on providing support for this significant product release from Microsoft.
Jingyi1
2 Intern
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199 Posts
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March 20th, 2012 02:00
Is windows 8 mainly used for workstation, tablet or mobile device? What's Microsoft's product roadmap for windows 2008 and HyperV? Will the reFS be selected as the default server OS file system as well?
JamesBEMC
257 Posts
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March 21st, 2012 02:00
NTFS will live on for a long time and ReFS will be positioned for large scale and shared storage structures at a server level.
A primary driver for ReFS will be Storage Pools and Spaces across multiple servers, which primarily Want to scale to higher volume size tiers than accepted today on NTFS (over DFS) across pools of servers and secondarily provide some levels of comfortable to storage environment which do not enjoy the resilience of an EMC Array.
Windows 8 will be used by all. In terms of Product Roadmap, suggest you contact either your local EMC mSpecialist and ask the questions and use a search engine and find it quickly such as http://rcpmag.com/articles/2011/02/01/the-2011-microsoft-product-roadmap.aspx
James.
pgaljan
61 Posts
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March 21st, 2012 08:00
Thanks James,
I think there’s some confusion (I know I am) around the status of NTFS. There are a lot of links out there that seem to indicate that NTFS as we know it will no longer be available Server8 ScrapsPart ofNTFS BaseCode GetsB AndThats+Good/article23795.htm> as an option in Windows 8. As a result, there’s a lot of hand-wringing about whether compatibility issues will crop up for which there is no workaround, as well as direct upgrade paths (as opposed to host-level migrations).
Tx1_f906d5
21 Posts
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March 21st, 2012 08:00
There's a very good blog post from Steve Sinofsky at http://blogs.msdn.com/b/b8/archive/2012/01/16/building-the-next-generation-file-system-for-windows-refs.aspx
There is an FAQ at the bottom of that blog, which provides some additional answers.
But to paraphrase someo of the points made: this is going to be a staged approach. NTFS will not disappear immediately, you only get ReFS on server for the moment, and Boot devices can't be ReFS volumes.
Configurations can have a mix of NTFS and ReFS, it's not an OR operation. You could simply continue to use only NTFS for all volumes.