Technical White Paper ECS Overview and Architecture Abstract This document provides a technical overview and design of the Dell EMC™ ECS™ software-defined cloud-scale object storage platform. August 2021 h14071.19 Revisions Revisions Date Description December 2015 Initial release May 2016 Updated for 2.2.1 September 2016 Updated for 3.0 August 2017 Updated for 3.1 March 2018 Updated for 3.2 September 2018 Updated for Gen3 Hardware February 2019 Updated for 3.3 September 2019 Updated for 3.4 February 2020 Updated ECSDOC-628 changes May 2020 Updated for 3.5 November 2020 Updated for 3.6 February 2021 Updated for 3.6.1 August 2021 Updated for 3.6.2 and compression mechanism Acknowledgements This paper was produced by the following: Author: Zhu, Jarvis The information in this publication is provided “as is.” Dell Inc. makes no representations or warranties of any kind with respect to the information in this publication, and specifically disclaims implied warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. Use, copying, and distribution of any software described in this publication requires an applicable software license. 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[9/2/2021] [Technical White Paper] [h14071.19] 2 ECS Overview and Architecture | h14071.19 Table of contents Table of contents Revisions............................................................................................................................................................................. 2 Acknowledgements ............................................................................................................................................................. 2 Table of contents ................................................................................................................................................................ 3 Executive summary ............................................................................................................................................................. 5 1 Introduction ................................................................................................................................................................... 6 1.1 Audience ............................................................................................................................................................. 6 1.2 Scope .................................................................................................................................................................. 6 2 Value of ECS ................................................................................................................................................................ 7 3 Architecture .................................................................................................................................................................. 9 3.1 Overview ............................................................................................................................................................. 9 3.2 ECS portal and provisioning services ............................................................................................................... 10 3.3 Data services .................................................................................................................................................... 12 3.3.1 Object ............................................................................................................................................................... 12 3.3.2 HDFS ................................................................................................................................................................ 13 3.3.3 NFS ................................................................................................................................................................... 16 3.3.4 Connectors and gateways ................................................................................................................................ 16 3.4 Storage engine ................................................................................................................................................. 17 3.4.1 Storage services ............................................................................................................................................... 17 3.4.2 Data .................................................................................................................................................................. 17 3.4.3 Data management ............................................................................................................................................ 19 3.4.4 Data flow ........................................................................................................................................................... 21 3.4.5 Write optimizations for file size ......................................................................................................................... 22 3.4.6 Space reclamation ............................................................................................................................................ 22 3.4.7 SSD metadata caching ..................................................................................................................................... 23 3.4.8 Cloud DVR ........................................................................................................................................................ 24 3.5 Fabric ................................................................................................................................................................ 24 3.5.1 Node agent ....................................................................................................................................................... 24 3.5.2 Lifecycle manager............................................................................................................................................. 25 3.5.3 Registry ............................................................................................................................................................. 25 3.5.4 Event library ...................................................................................................................................................... 25 3.5.5 Hardware manager ........................................................................................................................................... 25 3.6 Infrastructure ..................................................................................................................................................... 25 3.6.1 Docker .............................................................................................................................................................. 25 4 Appliance hardware models ....................................................................................................................................... 27 3 ECS Overview and Architecture | h14071.19 Table of contents 4.1 EX-series .......................................................................................................................................................... 27 4.2 Appliance networking ....................................................................................................................................... 29 4.2.1 S5148F - front-end public switches .................................................................................................................. 29 4.2.2 S5148F - back-end private switches ................................................................................................................ 30 4.2.3 S5248F - front-end public switches .................................................................................................................. 31 4.2.4 S5248F - back-end private switches ................................................................................................................ 31 4.2.5 S5232 – aggregation switch ............................................................................................................................. 32 5 Network separation .................................................................................................................................................... 33 6 Security ....................................................................................................................................................................... 34 6.1 Authentication ................................................................................................................................................... 34 6.2 Data services authentication