#215 – Stateless Compute Machines
Storage Unpacked Podcast
English - October 29, 2021 11:00 - 30 minutes - 28.1 MB - ★★★★★ - 21 ratingsTechnology Homepage Download Apple Podcasts Google Podcasts Overcast Castro Pocket Casts RSS feed
In this week’s episode, Chris and Martin discuss network booting and the ability to create completely stateless servers. The idea of SAN booting has been around for two decades, enabling both the operating system disk and data disks to be delivered from SAN storage. NVMe/TCP and other NVMe-oF protocols promise the ability to implement the […]
The post #215 – Stateless Compute Machines appeared first on Storage Unpacked.
In this week’s episode, Chris and Martin discuss network booting and the ability to create completely stateless servers. The idea of SAN booting has been around for two decades, enabling both the operating system disk and data disks to be delivered from SAN storage. NVMe/TCP and other NVMe-oF protocols promise the ability to implement the same capability for modern systems. Can this be done today? Why are more servers not booted from SAN? Is this a technical issue or one of practicality and comfort? With large-scale computing platforms, perhaps network booting will make (or already has made) a comeback.
Elapsed Time: 00:30:41
Timeline
00:00:00 – Intros00:01:25 – vSphere 7 deprecates USB sticks – storm in a teacup?00:02:40 – End users can still install from USB, but boot will be removed00:05:25 – Is USB media being used for cost saving or convenience?00:07:55 – Why do we still use local boot devices?00:08:30 – HCI solutions still need local drives00:09:35 – We still treat servers like pets00:11:55 – Everything should be configurable via software00:13:00 – Does the O/S represent a challenge for SAN boot?00:14:57 – SAN Boot is at least 15-20 years old00:16:15 – SAN Boot configuration is fiddly00:19:25 – Does NVMe/TCP allow network booting?00:21:00 – Does AWS Nitro enable SAN booting?00:21:45 – Will Project Monterey be used to SAN boot ESXi?00:24:05 – Nebulon is HCI with SAN boot00:27:00 – Composable infrastructure is a key network boot use case00:29:05 – Wrap Up
Related Podcasts & Blogs
#190 – NVIDIA BlueField SmartNICs and DPUs#177 – SmartNICs and Project Monterey#195 – Fungible Data Processing UnitsESXi on Raspberry PiVMware Project Monterey – First Impressions
Copyright (c) 2016-2021 Storage Unpacked. No reproduction or re-use without permission. Podcast episode #f4r5.
The post #215 – Stateless Compute Machines appeared first on Storage Unpacked.