Supported hardware and software
The RSIO is especially suitable to be used with the following components:
Hardware:
SPARC: Solaris/64-bit-capable platforms since SPARCv9
AMD64: Platforms supporting Solaris 10 (64 bit) or later, Linux Enterprise platforms
Operating systems:
RSIO Server: Solaris 10 / 11 (64 bit), earlier versions since 7 upon request
SLES (recommended 15.5), Tumbleweed, other Linux platforms upon request
RSIO Client: Solaris 10 / 11 (64 bit), earlier versions since 7 upon request
SLES (recommended 15.5 / 12.5 / 12.4)
RHEL (recommended 7.9)
further Linux Enterprise platforms upon request
RSIO Server
The RSIO Server implementation uses TCP/IP and therefore is available for any network interfaces. Since the server is tightly connected to the storage virtualisation of the OSL Storage Cluster Base package, completely virtualized volumes can be provided to clients connected over network. The operation of multiple RSIO servers within one cluster is possible.
Outstanding scalability
The Simple RSIO Servers implement the multipathing and link aggregation (trunking) capabilities of the RSIO protocol implicitely and independently from other drivers and mechanisms. Thanks to this, various network cards, systems, switches etc. can be used without any problems. The result of the particularly intelligent technology for minimization of latency and transport times are the excellent performance and scalability features of the server. Measurements with modern gigabit network interfaces have show an almost linear scaling of the throughput with far over 100 MByte per second and interface.
Extension of the existing SAN infrastructures
Compared to a connection to a network, the connection of a server to an existing SAN infrastructure is still remarkably more cost-intensive. A Simple RSIO Server can help to save the costs of such infrastructures, while connecting new servers to the SAN over the network. Placed between SAN and LAN, a Simple RSIO Server can represent a gateway to the SAN for the servers, that only have network connections.
RSIO Client
With the RSIO Client the access to the block I/O devices, which are available over the RSIO Server, is unusually simple and comfortable. The access to the Shared Storage and Volumes is divided into namespaces. The servers in one namespace have the access to the same Shared Storage and the same Volumes. This way an RSIO client can create multiple connections to the servers within one namespace at the same time, which allows to increase the availability of the block devices and to improve the load balancing between the servers. The Shared Storage available to all RSIO clients within a namespace, can be used by all of them at the same time. This simpifies the creation of distributed databases, high availability clusters and VM infrastructures.
Impressive Performance and Availability
The OSL RSIO Client is oriented towards the highest possible availability and data throughputs. Thanks to the strict separation between the driver and the transport system, the operating system kernel is effectively isolated, which is a big advantage in cases of failures or software updates. All I/O requests are distributed over the available data connections (multiplexing) and the failure of single connections can be bypassed without problems, if there are alternative connections to the RSIO Server (multipathing).
RSIO Client-Server Architecture
An RSIO Client can use multiple namespaces at the same time and access the devices provided by the respective storage servers. This allows to turn around a typical 1:n relation between Storage Servers and Storage Clients. Such a storage server farm enables particularly high I/O throughput for RSIO Clients and boasts an extremely scalable storage capacity.
The OSL RSIO Server in combination with the OSL Storage Cluster uses the cluster communication mechanisms to synchronize the configuration and metadata between different server instances in one cluster.
What is the advantage of combining RSIO with OSL Storage Cluster - a cluster-enabled storage virtualisation?
Performance / Backup / Data management
- Virtual partitions
- Concatenation
- Striping
- Mirroring of data mobility
- User-friendliness
- Hardware abstraction
- Custom device names
- Global Storage Pool without wasting storage
Thanks to the integration of the RSIO Servers, the hardware resources in an existing cluster environment can be used even more efficiently. Existing cluster nodes can grant access to cluster storage resources for other cluster nodes over their network components. This way, a SAN infrastructure, together with the storage virtualisation by the OSL Storage Cluster, can be used on the servers connected e.g. over Ethernet. The servers connected over the RSIO protocol can of course also become full cluster nodes with the ability to create and operate cluster applications with the OSL Application Control Option (ACO) and also to create and administer Application Volumes within the global Storage Pool. The required RSIO Client functionality is present in the OSL Storage Cluster Base package out of the box.
Integration of the OSL Extended Data Management functionality
If the Extended Data Management package (XDM) is installed on the RSIO Server and Client, then the mirroring, moving and cloning capabilities of the Application Volumes can be used over the RSIO. For this purpose, however, the data to be mirrored or transferred should not be transported from the servert to the client, but the client only needs to send the XDM commands to the server, and the server executes the related operations locally. This reduces the load on the network between the client and the server, and lets the I/O operations run in the existing storage network.
