Robert Altnoeder

LINSTOR enables the automation of the deployment of block storage that is replicated over multiple storage nodes and can act as a software defined storage provider for various container and virtualization platforms, such as Kubernetes, OpenStack, OpenNebula and Proxmox. It also includes additional storage features, such as the automation of storage encryption, deduplication or the automatic creation of file systems on new block storage volumes.

Presentation of the LINSTOR SDS system, which automates the management of different types of block storage volumes on a cluster of storage servers, with a focus on replicated storage for high availability and disaster recovery.

Focus on architecture & implementation of the system, integration with other software and the development process.

Intended audience:

• Operators, Architects, Developers of cloud & virtualization environments
• Operators of systems based on software defined storage
• Operators of OpenStack, OpenNebula, Proxmox virtualization platforms
• Operators of Kubernetes/Docker containerization

Focus of the lecture & discussion:

• Existing storage technologies, focus on Linux: block devices in general, device mapper/LVM, ZFS, DRBD, dmcrypt, etc.
• Challenges of automating storage management (allocation/modification (resizing, ...)/deallocation of volumes)
• Challenges of managing clusters (parallelization, networking, ...)
• Our solutions - how the system works, protocols involved, security model, configuration persistence, transaction safety, etc.
• Some interesting implementation details
• How the development team works - methods, processes, project management, the tools that we like to use