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Erik Smith

Hopkinton, MA. USA

I'm a Technical Director working at Dell EMC as a member of the Connectrix BU.

Recent Activity

NVMe over Fabrics’ Discovery problem

TL;DR – Today, Fibre Channel provides an NVMe over Fabrics Discovery mechanism, Ethernet does not. This blog post describes an investigation that was performed to determine if an enhancement to the NVMe over Fabrics Discovery protocol was needed in order for it to support a Network Centric connectivity model as... Continue reading

Posted Dec 7, 2017 at Brass Tacks

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The power of Layers

Originally posted by Erik Smith to Brasstacksblog Background I have a thing for breaking down complex topics into “Layers” (e.g., Storage Protocol Stacks). I use this approach because it breaks down what would otherwise be an overwhelming amount of information, into chunks of functionality that I can keep in my... Continue reading

Posted Dec 5, 2017 at Brass Tacks

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ZTIP – Part 3: Provision and Transport

This is part 3 of a multi-part series that describes a “side-project” a small team of us (Jean Pierre (JP), Alan Rajapa and Massarrah Tannous and I) have been working on for the past couple of years. In part 1, I introduced an early version of this concept referred to... Continue reading

Posted Dec 4, 2017 at Brass Tacks

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Zero Touch Infrastructure Provisioning (ZTIP)

This is part 2 of a multi-part series that describes a “side-project” a small team of us (Jean Pierre (JP), Alan Rajapa and Massarrah Tannous and I) have been working on for the past couple of years. You’ll note that in part 1 of the series, I was referring to... Continue reading

Posted Dec 1, 2017 at Brass Tacks

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The IaaS Missing Link

The beginning Almost exactly two years ago, a small group of us (including Alan Rajapa and Massarrah Tannous) participated in a “Hack Attack” that was being run by one of the Storage Platform teams within EMC. Our concept was simple; we were going to completely eliminate the manual storage provisioning... Continue reading

Posted Nov 30, 2017 at Brass Tacks

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How to determine a switch's role in a Clos network with MLAG’d leaves

A group of us have been experimenting with IP Fabrics recently and I'm curious to know if anyone has used the following approach or knows of work that accomplishes the same goal in a different way. When initializing an IP Fabric, one of the first decisions that needs to be... Continue reading

Posted Nov 29, 2017 at Brass Tacks

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Storage Protocol Stacks for NVMe

With all of the attention that NVMe has been getting recently, I wanted to provide an NVMe specific version of the original Storage Protocol Stacks diagram. Thanks for reading! Continue reading

Posted Nov 27, 2017 at Brass Tacks

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NVMe over Fabrics: Not ready (yet)

Image credit: https://www.someecards.com/usercards/viewcard/MjAxMy03ZWMxZjIxZmRkMjRmZGNl/ If you’re into IT infrastructure and you aren’t yet familiar with NVMe and its potential benefits, now would probably be a good time to start reading. In fact, since there’s already so much high quality material that describes what NVMe is, why it’s useful and how it... Continue reading

Posted Jul 24, 2017 at Brass Tacks

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Slow Drain due to Bandwidth mismatch and Large Block READs

Every once in a while, you come across information that makes you understand something in a completely new way. Image credit: https://farscapedevelopment.wordpress.com/2012/07/06/eureka/ I had just such an experience a few weeks back, and Alan Rajapa and I have been working in the lab since then to try and come to... Continue reading

Posted Apr 13, 2017 at Brass Tacks

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Just about 19 years ago, I pulled into the yard at Tresca Brothers and asked my dispatcher if I should wash out for the day. He said “No. One more up front” meaning I had another load to deliver and that I should get it from the Central mix (basically... Continue reading

Posted Sep 5, 2016 at Brass Tacks

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Storage protocol stacks

The following diagram was put together for my EMC World 2016 presentation. It provides a graphical overview of the most commonly used Storage Protocols and how they relate to one another. A special thanks to David Black and Tony Rodriguez for their inputs! Thanks for Reading! Continue reading

Posted Jul 5, 2016 at Brass Tacks

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Slow Drains are impacting your SAN!

If you work with Fibre Channel on a regular basis and have come to depend on its excellent performance attributes, you might be surprised to learn that many of the cases handled by our SAN team in Customer Support are related to performance problems. Typically, as we dig into these... Continue reading

Posted Feb 2, 2016 at Brass Tacks

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Fibre Channel is better than Ethernet...

…for Enterprise Storage. Although this blog post isn’t an April fool’s joke, I do greatly appreciate them when they are done well. As a result I’m slightly in awe of the amount of thought Tony Bourke has put into his last three (2013, 2014 and 2015). Truth be told, I'm... Continue reading

Posted May 19, 2015 at Brass Tacks

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Join me at EMC World 2015!

It's almost time for EMC World (May 4th - 7th) and I’m happy to say that once again I’ve been honored with a couple of highly coveted EMC World speaking slots! Based on the very positive feedback I received from last year, I’ll be sticking to a similar format and... Continue reading

Posted Apr 24, 2015 at Brass Tacks

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A Simple Virtual Storage Network Demo

I'm still working on the fourth installment of the Virtual Storage Network (VSN) blog post series, but I wanted to share this link to a youtube video that shows a very simple (2 port) VSN demo that we'll be showing next week at EMC World. The topology that I'm using... Continue reading

Posted May 2, 2014 at Brass Tacks

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Virtual Storage Networks – Part 3 (Multi-tenant capable topologies)

This is part three of a blog series that describes a new concept we're referring to as a Virtual Storage Network. In part 1 of this series, I introduced the Virtual Storage Network or VSN as concept that enables the dynamic creation of storage service compositions. I also provided some... Continue reading

Posted May 1, 2014 at Brass Tacks

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New E-Lab Interoperability Navigator features

As I mentioned in a previous post, the E-Lab Navigator Team recently finished a complete redesign of their user interface. If you’re interested in much more detail, check out the introduction video and the user guide. Rather than repeat what they’ve provided in the guide and video, I'd like to... Continue reading

Posted Apr 25, 2014 at Brass Tacks

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An Introduction to Virtual Storage Networks

I recently started a VSN blog series that describes (in great detail) a new concept that we’re referring to as a Virtual Storage Network or VSN. As I was writing the third installment in the series, I realized the approach I was using to define the VSN concept was analogous... Continue reading

Posted Apr 16, 2014 at Brass Tacks

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Join me at EMC World 2014!

It's almost time for EMC World again (May 5th - 8th) and I'm happy to say that I've been granted the privilege of presenting to our Customers again. I'm actually very excited about this year because we're introducing a few new concepts, demonstrating at least one of them and mixing... Continue reading

Posted Apr 14, 2014 at Brass Tacks

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Fast Sideways - A connectivity point of view

Although I mentioned this functionality in a previous blog post, the impact that this type of use case will have on connectivity automation is so significant that it deserves to have it's own post. The first time I heard the FAST Sideways concept mentioned publicly was by Brian Gallagher during... Continue reading

Posted Apr 14, 2014 at Brass Tacks

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Virtual Storage Networks – Part 2 (Requirements for multi-tenant storage)

In part 1 of this series, I introduced the concept of a Virtual Storage Network, provided some background information and stated what we believe the requirements for multi-tenant storage are. In this post I’ll dig into the details of those requirements. Requirements for multi-tenant storage As stated before, the following... Continue reading

Posted Apr 10, 2014 at Brass Tacks

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Coming soon: The next generation E-Lab Interoperability Navigator!

As many of you know, E-Lab Interoperability Navigator (ELN) is a free E-Lab resource that anyone can use to determine which configurations and solutions have been tested and are currently supported by EMC. What many of you may not fully appreciate is the staggering amount of work that it takes... Continue reading

Posted Apr 9, 2014 at Brass Tacks

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Virtual Storage Networks - Part 1

We’ve been busy. For the past three years a group of people including Mark Lippitt, Vinh Dinh, Doug Fierro and I have been working on an idea that we’re referring to as a Virtual Storage Network or VSN for short. The VSN concept seeks to take advantage of the major... Continue reading

Posted Apr 9, 2014 at Brass Tacks

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FCoE Case Studies TechBook update

An updated version of the FCoE Case Studies TechBook (v3.0) has been posted to powerlink and emc.com New in this version is a chapter titled “Brocade VDX Switches Setup Examples” that was written by Aditya Nadkarni. It provides an overview of the VDX switch/VCS Fabric, a description of supported topologies... Continue reading

Posted May 8, 2013 at Brass Tacks

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Join me at EMC World 2013!

If you’re planning to attend EMC World 2013 May 6th-9th at the Venetian, Las Vegas, and you’re interested in FC, FCoE, iSCSI or Network Virtualization, please consider attending at least one of the following sessions: Storage Area Networking: SAN Technology Update & Best Practice Deep Dive for FC, FCoE, &... Continue reading

Posted May 1, 2013 at Brass Tacks

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