SPDK on Windows (Experimental)

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Yes, it really does say Windows and SPDK in the same sentence! It is now possible to experiment with SPDK on Windows.

Introduction

In a typical Data Centre, a significant percentage of the servers will be running Microsoft Windows. This represents a huge, untapped opportunity to extend the deployment of SPDK! Until now, it has been impossible to run SPDK-based applications on Windows because SPDK uses POSIX APIs. To address this, a simple POSIX emulation layer has been introduced to SPDK’s main branch for use on Windows, enabling cross-compilation with MinGW.

What value does this add? A few potential use cases include:

  • Providing access to storage via a native NVMe-oF initiator.
    Windows doesn’t have a baked-in driver and there aren’t any software only solutions available.
  • Delivering fast access to NVMe storage, avoiding kernel bottlenecks.
  • Constructing iSCSI and NVMF storage targets.
  • Integration into environments running Windows Containers.

So, how has this been achieved?

Portability Improvements

SPDK is intended to be portable to different platforms, but by focusing on Linux and FreeBSD a few minor assumptions had crept into the code. For example:

  • On Windows a ‘long’ is 32-bits whereas on Linux and FreeBSD it is 64-bits. Some assignments and casts needed to be changed and printf has to use PRI64x to print 64-bit values.
  • Bitfields are handled differently if adjacent definitions have a different basic type.
  • A POSIX mutex must be initialized before use.

It is a testimony to the high quality of the SPDK code that so few changes were required.

Windows Platform Development Kit

MayaData has started a new project called the Windows Platform Development Kit (WPDK) to provide the POSIX functionality needed to run SPDK on Windows. WPDK implements a set of headers and a lightweight library specifically tailored to meet the needs of SPDK.

The scope of the project is limited to SPDK support. Unlike Cygwin, it is not intended to be a generic POSIX emulation library. Functionality is mapped as closely as possible to existing Windows semantics with minimum emulation. It is intended to be a production quality layer that runs as native code, with no surprises, that can be tested independently.

Supporting packages such as libcunit, which are required to build SPDK, are included to simplify the use of WPDK.

Makefile Changes

The SPDK makefiles have been extended with a few strategic changes to:

  • Incorporate WPDK into the build in much the same way as DPDK (‘–with-wpdk=<dir>’).
  • Produce executables that end in ‘.exe’ as required by Windows.
  • Handle specific attributes of MinGW such as enforcing ‘-mstack-protector-guard=global’ to avoid a stack protection bug.

Current Status

The project is currently at an early experimental stage:

  • All of the SPDK source compiles, apart from spdk_top which requires libcurses.
  • All of the SPDK Unit Tests pass.
  • The iSCSI target can serve storage.
  • The NVMe over TCP target can serve storage.
  • The SPDK stack can attach to a physical NVMe disk and issue I/O.
  • Unit tests exist for the majority of the WPDK functionality.

Future Direction

The intent is to pursue the project to production quality, fully integrated into the SPDK CI and Test environment.

Getting Started

A ‘Getting Started’ guide is available:

Acknowledgements

The support and encouragement of the SPDK community has been much appreciated and has helped to turn this ‘crazy idea’ into an experimental reality in a short timeframe.

The Windows Platform Development Kit has been developed and contributed by MayaData, the Data Agility company.

Portions of the code are based on work done by the DPDK community to add support for Windows.

Contributing

Contributions are welcome and needed! Please head over to the WPDK documentation and WPDK repository to get started.

Please join the SPDK community and tell us how you are using SPDK on Windows. For real-time discussions, the SPDK Slack contains a Windows channel.

Happy Experimenting!