The storage depot is the fundamental hardware building block for storage using Logistical Networking’s Internet Backplane Protocol for block-level storage.  Both the NAS and Archive depots run a similar software stack where they differ is in the components.  While the Archive depot is focused on raw storage the NAS depot is focused on performance.

A NAS depot is configured with up to 36 Enterprise SAS or SSD hard drives along with  dual 10GB/s network cards and/or Infiniband connectivity.  An additional high-performance SSD is used to store internal IBP databases.

Because of the IBP block-level abstraction drive sizes and types can be mixed within the same depot.  Each drive is assigned a unique resource ID or RID and can be given an arbitrary collection attributes used to create an unlimited number of storage pools and selection criteria to support storage tiering.  Resources can be added and removed without taking the server down making lifecycle management and replacement easy.

IBP calls a datum of storage an allocation.  Allocations can be created that can detect silent bit errors on disk by performing block-level checksums for I/O operations and notifying the requester.  It cannot correct these errors itself but the higher level tools can.  Additionally network checksums can be enabled to detect data corruption issues in the network.

The IBP server can detect dead or failing drives and will automatically eject them from the IBP server process to be handled by an administrator.  It also has a data scrubbing process that runs at regular intervals to detect problematic spots on the drive and alerts the administrator.