SANdbox

SANdbox is a developer enablement portal that provides documentation and tools that will help automate the deployment and management of NVMe(TM) IP-Based SANs (Storage Area Networks). An NVMe IP-Based SAN typically consists of Hosts, NVM Subsystems and one or more network switches that provide IP connectivity.

As the number of endpoints used begin to scale up (e.g., more than 32 end devices), a traditional NVMe IP-Based SAN can become difficult to manage. More information about this scalability problem can be found here NVMe-oF: Discovery Automation for NVMe IP-Based SANs

To address this scalability challenge, several companies have collaborated on the concept of a Centralized Discovery Controller (CDC) to allow administrators to deploy NVMe/TCP at scale. This is accomplished by providing a Centralized Discovery Service for NVMe/TCP Endpoints that facilitates endpoint discovery, registration, soft zoning, and event notification.

SANdbox provides documentation, tools and helpful resources that will enable you to programatically interact with IP SANs. Before you begin, please take a moment to review the following information.

Additional information about Centralized Discovery Controllers (for example Dell's SFSS) and the NVMe/TCP ecosystem can be found below:

• The Future of Software-defined Networking for Storage Connectivity
• NVMe-oF Looking beyond performance hero numbers
• SNIA NSF – Discovery Automation for NVMe IP-Based SANs
• SNIA SDC – Discovery Protocol deep dive
• Nvme-stas (Dell maintained open source discovery client for Linux)
• SPDK added support for TP-8009 Auto-discovery