Storage served over a network.
WHAT IT IS
Storage presented as file shares over a network.
WHAT PROTOCOLS ARE USED
One common in Unix environments One common in Windows environments Object protocols, increasingly
WHAT IT SUITS
Shared documents and media Backup targets Home directories Content shared between servers
WHAT IT DOES NOT SUIT WELL
Databases and other latency-sensitive workloads.
WHY
File protocol overhead and network latency add to every operation.
WHAT AFFECTS PERFORMANCE
Network capacity and latency The protocol and its version Whether operations are many small ones or few large ones
WHAT SMALL-FILE WORKLOADS EXPOSE
Latency, since each operation waits for a round trip.
WHAT TO CONFIGURE
A dedicated network for storage, where possible Appropriate frame sizes Caching on clients where consistency permits
WHAT TO BE CAREFUL WITH
Locking behaviour differing between protocols Permissions differing between systems The storage becoming a single point of failure
WHAT TO MONITOR
Latency, throughput, capacity, and drive health.
