Architecture and Implementation of a Data Compression System at Switch-Level in ATA-over-Ethernet Storage Networks

In this work, a new architecture for loss less data compression and decompression is integrated within an Ethernet switch using the NetFPGA open platform. The aim is compressing data packets in a block-based storage network. Data packets are compressed when written to the target disk and decompressed when read by the initiator. ATA-over-Ethernet (AoE) has been chosen as it is an efficient and relatively simple technology that does not rely on IP. The ultimate goal is achieving a better use of the available network bandwidth with the target and a possible reduction in power consumption. The use case of application-level check pointing in supercomputing is presented, for which compression ratios are given, and the efficiency of the proposed scheme is then discussed.