Enterprise storage experts worked together to deliver the thin provisioning and offloaded data transfer features based on the standard spec developed at T10.

1. THIN PROVISIONING AND OFFLOADED DATA TRANSFER
A Joint Effort of the Storage Industry
A
The process to deliver a Windows application based on the industry standard
• Start the project blueprint with a group of key members
• Present the project proposal at the standard committee
• Propose the standard spec and requirements with a working group
• Implement the approved standard proposals
• Develop the test tools according to the standard spec.
• Complete and deliver the finalized solutions with qualified products

2. KEY CHANGES COMING… (1/2)
Windows & Thin Provisioning
Thinly-Provisioned LUNs will be a first-class citizen
– Identification
• Providing mechanisms for identifying thinly provisioned LUNs throughout the OS
• Ability to query the ‘mapped/unmapped’ state of LUN extents
– Notification
• Exposing events to indicate when LUNs cross thresholds boundaries
• Events will be consumable by management applications

3. KEY CHANGES COMING… (1/2)
Windows & Thin Provisioning
Thinly-Provisioned LUNs will be a first-class citizen
 Optimization
 Providing end-to-end transparency of application and file system allocations
 All the way from the application layer through to hardware
 Unmap requests provided both real-time and scheduled basis
 Regular slab consolidation to ensure smallest storage footprints
 Compatibility
 Windows Logo requirement & tests for arrays that support thin provisioning

4. END TO END PLUMBING OF UNMAP(TRIM) / THIN PROVISIONING
The Storage e2e
Application
(Like SQL, VHD’s etc.)
NTFS
Storport
Storage
Optimizer
Storage Hardware
File Level TRIM API
Delete Notification (TRIM)
UnMAP SCSI Command

5. Identification
• Windows will provide mechanisms to discover thinly-provisioned LUNs
• Management applications will be able to discover this attribute via an associated IOCTLs
• Provides the indication that other Windows features can take advantage of the thinly-
provisioned LUN.
• Ability to query the ‘mapped/unmapped’ state of LUN extents
• Potentially useful for management applications

6. Notifications
• Windows will provide two types of Thin Provisioning notifications:
• Threshold Notification – Used when usage threshold is crossed
• Logged to Event Log for consumption by admin or storage management application
• Resource Exhaustion Notification – Used to indicate when capacity is exhausted
• Temporary Resource Exhaustion – Expected to be a temporary state while additional
resources are coming online
• OS will retry for a set period in this condition
• Permanent Resource Exhaustion – Critical Event
• Write will fail and OS will take LUN offline

7. Optimization
Providing end-to-end transparency of application and file system allocations
 All the way from the application layer through to hardware
Unmap notifications provided both real-time and scheduled basis
 Scheduled ‘re-trims’ for storage arrays that don’t prefer real-time unmap
Scheduled slab consolidation to ensure smallest storage footprints
 Move data from sparsely populated slabs to densely populated slabs to further
improve capacity utilization
 Mapped/unmapped state is a key input for this optimization

8. Compatibility / Logo Requirement
Logo Requirements for Storage Array supports Thin Provisioning
• Thinly provisioned LUN identification – Supported VPD Page and LBP VPD Page
• UNMAP/Trim Support – UNMAP Logo test implementation
• Get LBA Mapping State Information - Get LBA Status
• Report LBA Mapping Resource Status – LBP Log Page
• Handle threshold and resource exhaustion conditions – Sense Key and Additional Sense Code

9. Windows Offloaded Data Transfer enables host server to interact with storage
device to perform data movement through the high-speed storage network.
Windows Offloaded Data Transfer

10. Server1
or
Hyper-V
VM1
Physical Disk, VHD or SMB Shared Disk
Server2
or
Hyper-V
VM2
Client-Server
Network
Storage
Network
Data Movement
Offload
Read
Return
Token
Offload
Write
Return
Result
Physical Disk, VHD or SMB Shared Disk
Copy Offload
Application
Token
Windows Offloaded Data Transfer

11. Offloaded Data Transfer (ODX)
Logo Requirements
• ODX Capability and Identification
• Supported VPD Pages VPD page
• Third Party Copy VPD Page (Page Code 8Fh) +
Block Device ROD Token Limits descriptor
• ODX command support
• Populate Token
• Write Using Token
• Received ROD Token Information
• Token Management during ODX operation
• Zero Well Known Token Support

12. Thanks to the following Key Members
• Dell - Lazarus Vekiarides, Daniel Soloman
• EMC - David Black,
• HP-3Par - Mothias Popp, Curtis Ballard
• NetApp - Fred Knight, John Meneghini, Ranga Sankar
• IBM – Kevin Butt, David Hartman
• Fujitsu – Kun Katsumata
• Microsoft – Jaivir Aithal, Tristan Griffith, David Chang