In this presentation, we will describe a complete end-to-end Software Defined Storage (SDS) solution for cloud data centers using Infrastructure Processing Units (IPUs). IPUs provide a high performance NVMe interface to host, abstracting away the details of networked storage and enabling storage disaggregation and bare-metal hosting. NVMe/TCP is a high performance protocol widely deployed because of its ease of deployment and better scalability in large scale-out networks. Integration of an IPU-based NVMe/TCP initiator with a Kubernetes CSI plugin for a clustered NVMe/TCP target provides a full software defined storage solution for IPU-equipped hosts. The outline of the presentation: - Overview of IPU architecture and SPDK-based NVMe/TCP Initiator Design - Overview of the LightBits Cloud Data Platform, a full-featured clustered NVMe/TCP target - Integration of IPU-based NVMe/TCP Initiator and backend storage service -- IPU Storage Management Agent (SMA) -- Integration with K8s CSI node driver for orchestration - Summary and Call to Action to enhance orchestration frameworks for IPU based storage solutions
Disaggregated NVMe/TCP Storage Using an Infrastructure Processing Unit (IPU)
- The audience will gain a complete understanding of what it takes to build a full end-2-end software defined storage solution for IPUs.
- The audience will learn the integration of K8s CSI node driver with IPU Storage Management Agent (SMA).
- The audience will learn the challenges and opportunities in enhancing orchestration frameworks for IPU based storage solutions.
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- Lev SolomonovLightbits Labs
A new class of cloud and datacenter infrastructure is emerging into the marketplace.
- Venkat PullelaKeysight Technologies
With the NVMe/TCP and disaggregated storage gaining rapid market adoption, it is more clear than ever that Storage Initiator (SI) needs to be more performant and efficient to provide applications w
DPUs (data processing units) are an exciting new category of processor that complement CPUs and GPUs inside data centers.
As hardware layers in storage systems (such as network and storage devices) continue to increase in performance, it is vital that the IO software stack does not fall behind and become the bottlenec
NOTE: this paper was developed by Ziye Yang, a Staff Software Engineer at Intel and is being presented by colleague Yadong Li, a Principal Engineer in the Ethernet Products Group at Intel.
Local disk emulation using domain-specific hardware poses a great opportunity for innovation in the storage domain.
Infrastructure offload based around NVMe-oF can deliver performance of direct attached storage with the benefits and composability of shared storage.
Connecting remote storage to compute node requires adding and configuring software stacks for “storage over network” in the compute node.
- Tomasz ZawadzkiIntel Technology Poland
SNIA Developer Conference
September 15-17, 2025
SDC 2025 is brought to you by SNIA. SNIA is an industry association committed to its mission of worldwide leadership developing and promoting architectures, standards, education and vendor-neutral collaboration.
