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Managing the information that drives the enterprise

STORAGE

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Solid-StateStorageImplementationChoicesUsing flash in storage requires you to make choices, such as primary storage vs. performance cache, storage array vs. PCIe card and MLC vs. SLC.

ESSENTIAL GUIDE TO

INSIDESolid-state storage for the 21st century

Making a case for SSDs

Solid-state case studies

Pros and cons: MLC vs. SLC

MLC for the enterprise

SSD makes inroads with SMBs

SSD in a cache appliance

SSDs

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Solid-state storage for

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Pros and cons:MLC vs. SLC

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oUR RESEARCH SHOWS that deployments of solid-state storage devices have morethan doubled in the year and a half we’ve been tracking this technology.Today, we see that more than 16% of companies have taken the plunge—an impressive figure when you consider that enterprise-grade solid-statehas been widely available for only a few years and the cost of NAND flash is still approximately 10 or more times that of traditional disk media.

And that may just be the tip of the iceberg, as another 11% of respon-dent firms say they’ll implement solid-state this year, while one-third planto evaluate it. All told, only 40% of organizations don’t have any plans tomove on solid-state storage in the immediate future.

As you probably know—or willlearn in the following pages—solid-state storage comes in a variety offorms for servers, arrays or special-ized appliances. At this point in itsevolution, approximately 75% of solid-state users are opting to useflash storage in a SAS or SATA formfactor that plugs right into a tradi-tional data storage array. Still, nearlyone-third of surveyed companies aretapping into solid-state directly atthe server, in the form of storage devices that neatly slot into a server’s PCI Express (PCIe) bus.

So why is relatively untested, extremely expensive storage so popular?Users with the need for speed will tell you there’s nothing comparable tosolid-state storage available today. It runs circles around hard disk drivesbut uses a fraction of the power spinning disks require while barely warm-ing the air around it.

Solid-state: Storage for the 21st centuryMore and more companies are adding solid-state technologies

to their storage environments. Costs have dropped significantly, but selective implementations

are still the most common.

Copyright 2012, TechTarget. No part of this publication may be transmitted or reproduced in any form, or by any means, without permission in writingfrom the publisher. For permissions or reprint information, please contact Mike Kelly, VP and Group Publisher ([email protected]).

editorial | rich castagna

Solid-state storageruns circles aroundhard disk drives butuses a fraction of thepower spinning disksrequire while barelywarming the airaround it.

mailto:[email protected]

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STORAGE Essential Guide to Solid-State Storage Implementation Choices

Because it’s still something of a luxury item for most data storageshops’ budgets, users have found very specific use cases for solid-statestorage, reserving it for only the most critical IOPS-hungry applications.The need to be selective when using solid-state has also spawned (or atleast stimulated) the development of automated techniques to move dataand apps in and out of solid-state storage as needed. Those dynamic tieringapps are rapidly finding their way into storage systems whether or notthey include solid-state components.

Besides the choice of where to deploy solid-state, you’ll have to makeother decisions, such as whether to opt for single-level cell (SLC) or multi-level cell (MLC) NAND flash, the enhanced version of MLC called eMLC (wherethe “e” stands for enterprise) or even the much costlier non-volatile randomaccess memory (NVRAM).

All these issues and decision points are covered in this guide. Read it,and you’ll be one step closer to 21st century storage. 2

Rich Castagna ([email protected]) is editorial director of the StorageMedia Group.


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MAKING ACASE FOR

SSDsInterest in solid-state storage ishigh, and with a variety of solid-state implementations availableand newer technologies emerging,it’s time to take a serious look athow solid-state could enhanceyour storage environment.

By Dennis Martin

dATA STORAGE PROFESSIONALS considering solid-state storage have myriad solid-state storage architectures to consider, including systems that use solid-state drives (SSDs) in various form factors, caching implementations andappliances. If that’s not enough to ponder, those planning on implementingthese systems need to decide whether to use a product that mixes solid-state storage and traditional disk drives or to use SSD-only storage subsystems.

But perhaps more important than just choosing the hardware, enterprisesneed to decide what data to put on solid-state storage or consider someform of software automation to move the data onto solid-state storage tomake the most efficient use of what is still an expensive resource. Decidingwhat data to place on solid-state storage and how to put it there makeschoosing a solid-state storage option more complex, and your selectionswill have a long-term impact.

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SOLID-STATE-ONLY SHOPS: NOT SO SOONIn a few decades, some form of solid-state storage may be the dominantand possibly only form of enterprise data storage. But given the presentstate of matters, that day is (at best) on the distant horizon. We mightdream of replacing all our electro-mechanical disk drives with solid-statestorage if cost weren’t a factor, but there’s nowhere near enough semicon-ductor fabrication production capacity available today to satisfy the totalstorage capacity that’s deployed in IT shops.

But there are some promisingsigns. Enterprise solid-state storageprices are dropping relative to enter-prise hard disk drives (HDDs). Notthat long ago, enterprise solid-statestorage was as much as 40 timesthe price of an equivalent capacity of enterprise hard disk drive storage.The price comparison ratios are inthe neighborhood of 25% to 50% ofthat today, depending on specificsolid-state storage products.

As a result of this pricing and capacity disparity, data storage managersand administrators are finding that solid-state storage complements existingtraditional forms of storage. They’ve deployed, or are planning to deploy, solid-state storage where high performance, low latency or energy savings areneeded.

There are two basic ways to implement solid-state storage technology:• Use solid-state storage directly as a primary store• Use solid-state storage as a cache in front of spinning disks

Each of these implementations has its advantages and disadvantages,and implementations vary among storage vendors. And some vendors offerone implementation now while planning to offer the other.

USING SOLID-STATE FOR PRIMARY STORAGEFor vendors that implement solid-state storage directly as a primary datastore, many use the standard disk drive form factor. This implementationmethod is simple to understand and is compatible with current subsystemdesigns and configuration processes. The one downside to this approach is


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Not that long ago,enterprise solid-statestorage was as muchas 40 times the priceof an equivalentcapacity of enterprisehard disk drive storage.

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that many of today’s controllers and subsystems weren’t designed for diskdrives with an order of magnitude of faster performance at the drive level,so vendors typically don’t support a large system completely full of solid-state disk drives. But this is changing as vendors design and build improvedcontrollers that can handle many more solid-state drives. The good news isthat significant performance gains can be achieved with a relatively smallnumber of SSDs, often only one full or partial drive shelf. Some users arereporting five to eight times performance gains for some workloads with a relatively small amount of solid-state storage.

We’re also seeing an increasing number of solid-state-only storageproducts available today and planned for release over the next severalmonths. These systems are designed to use solid-state storage as the primary store, with capacities in the single- or double-digit terabytes today and larger capacities coming soon.

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Form factors and interfacessOLID-STATE STORAGE comes in a variety of form factors, including nearlyall the disk drive form factors, as internal modules within a storagesystem or as a PCI Express (PCIe) bus card. The PCIe bus form factorprovides the potential for very high bandwidth storage access withina server or workstation.

Enterprise solid-state drives are available in 2.5-inch and 3.5-inchdrive form factors that are compatible with today’s servers and storagesystems. The primary interfaces for these are SATA, SAS and FibreChannel (FC). The SATA interface is available for many solid-statedrives, especially for the consumer and desktop market. FC has a long future as a SAN interface but is approaching end-of-life as a disk drive interface. Disk drive suppliers and solid-state storage sup-pliers are moving away from FC as a drive interface in favor of 6 GbpsSAS as an enterprise drive interface. We expect the FC interface on3.5-inch drives to stick around for a while to maintain spare parts onthe relatively large number of 3.5-inch FC drives in enterprise disksubsystems. And we anticipate that relatively few 2.5-inch enterprisedrives will have a FC interface.

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the big question focuses on what data to put on the solid-state storage.There are some obvious candidates, such as database indexes, heavily accessed database tables, temporary scratch areas, log files or any otherhot spot. However, this is often not a static solution. Some data that’s hottoday may not be hot tomorrow. So storage administrators, database admin-istrators or other IT technicians may have to continually monitor data usagepatterns and be prepared to make adjustments on a fairly regular basis. Insome cases, this increased management burden may be too much workand involve too much operational expense to be worth the tradeoff for increased I/O performance.

The answer is to provide an auto-mated way for the storage system to identify the hot data, move it ontothe solid-state storage automaticallyand to then move it to slower stor-age when it no longer requires solid-state performance. Many vendorsprovide forms of tiering softwarethat does exactly that. This softwareobserves the I/O patterns for a timeand then moves the data in a waythat’s transparent to the host appli-cations. Many of these automatedsolutions allow the administrator todetermine what activity level defines“hot” data, set the time period overwhich the observations are madeand then set a separate parameterthat controls the frequency of data movement (anywhere from hourly toweekly). Some of this software has the ability to make recommendationsabout the data tiering based on the observations it has made, such as rec-ommending a 10%/90% mix of solid-state vs. spinning disk.

Solid-state-only storage products eliminate the need to move data fromfaster to slower storage because all the data is on fast storage. These sys-tems appeal to customers who want to put an entire application and itsdata on solid-state storage. At today’s price points, these solutions tend tobe deployed for critical applications only. The decision (and budget) to acquirethem tends to come from line-of-business owners or architects rather thanfrom the IT department.


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The answer is to provide an automatedway for the storagesystem to identify thehot data, move it ontothe solid-state storageautomatically and to then move it to slower storage when it no longerrequires solid-state performance.

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CACHING WITH SOLID-STATEThe other basic implementation is to use solid-state storage as a cache infront of spinning disks. This method has the advantage of always acceler-ating the hot data in real-time, since only the hot data is likely to be in cache.And because the solid-state storage is acting as a cache, there’s no needfor an administrator to decide what data should be placed on it. The basicquestions here are what size cache is appropriate and which workloadsshould be directed toward the cache to make the best use of the solid-state device.

Solid-state caching solutions can be built into existing storage systems orservers, or delivered as external appliances. Adding flash memory as acache inside a storage subsystem in effect provides a “level 2” cache notunlike the L2 cache found on many processors inside today’s computers.This added cache capacity improvesperformance for most if not all oper-ations. In addition, because flashmemory is nonvolatile, this cacheprovides some extra protection in theevent of power loss. But issues suchas cache coherency, and whether the cache is DRAM-based or flashmemory-based, remain. Generally, a cache is tied to one processor orcontroller, and there are variouscache management functions thatcan be applied to allow caches towork properly with multiple proces-sors or controllers. In addition, stor-age systems that use caching can add special features to their internalOSes that are aware of the cache and can provide additional flexibility,such as the ability to assign different I/O priorities for I/O going to differentvolumes on the storage system.

The caching appliances add the benefits of cache without requiringchanges to any existing servers or storage systems. These appliances fiteasily into the storage network and can accelerate all I/O going throughthem, even sending data to different storage subsystems at the same time.Many of the appliances can be set to write-back, write-through or pass-through for any given volume they accelerate. Some of the caching appli-ances are constructed in such a way as to allow their memory modules


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Adding flash memoryas a cache inside astorage subsystem in effect provides a“level 2” cache notunlike the L2 cachefound on manyprocessors insidetoday’s computers.

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to be hot-plugged, so maintenance or growth can occur without taking downthe entire appliance.

The big question for a caching implementation is how much cache isenough. For many workloads and applications, a relatively small amount ofcache (5% to 20%) relative to the total storage allocated to that applicationis enough to provide significant performance improvements. For otherworkloads, the cache needs to be large enough to hold the entire volumeto achieve appreciable performance gains.

IT’S ALL ABOUT PERFORMANCESolid-state storage, however it’s deployed, offers the promise of significantperformance gains. We’ve seen results of seven to nine times overall per-formance gains in our lab testing for various real-world applications (email,database, etc.) when configured optimally for the application.

With performance gains of that magnitude possible, what’s not to like?Certainly, pricing is a factor. However, consider some of the current methodsthat are used to increase performance of spinning disk drives, such as“short stroking.” This technique spreads data over many disk drives by using only a portion of the capacity of each drive for data so as many“spindles” as possible can be applied to improve performance. To achievedesired performance goals, some users short stroke some of their enter-prise disk drives using ratios of 7-to-1, 8-to-1 or 9-to-1, which meansthey’re using only 1/7th, 1/8th or 1/9th of the available capacity on eachdrive. If the price of an enterprise SSD is 10 times to 15 times the price ofthe spinning drives being short stroked, it may make sense to move thatapplication data to enterprise SSDs and get the required performancewhile using much less power and space.

Almost all data storage system vendors now offer configurations thatuse a combination of solid-state storage and enterprise SATA storage instead of arrays full of enterprise spinning disk drives. These new config-urations typically offer higher performance, equivalent capacity, lowerpower consumption, smaller space requirements and lower total hard-ware costs. 2

Dennis Martin has been working in the IT industry since 1980. He is the founder andpresident of Demartek, a computer industry analyst organization and testing lab.


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IT SHOPS THAT implement solid-state storage technology must decide whetherto use it in traditional disk arrays, as cache, in appliances or in servers.

Application needs generally determine the solid-state storage choicethat will bring the greatest performance boost. Types of I/O-intensive appsthat tend to benefit from solid-state storage technology include database,data warehouse, data mining, analytics and Web serving.

If the I/O bottleneck is isolated to a single server or application, server-based solid-state storage might be the best approach, whether that’s with2.5-inch or 3.5-inch solid-state drives (SSDs), PCI Express (PCIe) cards ordual in-line memory modules (DIMMs).

An IT shop with data sets that are intermittently hot might select NANDflash cache, in which the system typically determines the hottest data toaccelerate.

If an IT shop has several I/O-intensive applications that need a perform-ance boost, it might opt for SSDs in a shared storage array. A solid-stateappliance or solid-state-only array is another option when an IT shop wantsto isolate the data to a single device.

App needs dictate where to use solid-state storageSolid-state storage technology can be used in differentways. IT must decide whether to use technology in diskarrays, as cache, in appliances or in servers. By Carol Sliwa

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The notion of a solid-state appliance dates back to the earliest dynamicrandom access memory (DRAM) systems from Texas Memory SystemsInc., which now also makes NAND flash-based products. Framingham,Mass.-based IDC continues to track solid-state-only appliances fromTexas Memory Systems and other vendors, including Dataram Corp., Nim-bus Data Systems Inc., Violin Memory Inc. and Whiptail Technologies Inc.But some vendors, analysts and users prefer to call the appliances solid-state-only arrays or dedicated solid-state storage devices.

Read on for case studies focusing on each of the solid-state storage options, with an eye toward the decision-making process.

CASE STUDY 1SETAO: SSDs in storage arrays facilitate performance boost for several applications

Background: The private company that operates the public transporta-tion network for the city of Orleans, France—Société d’Exploitation pour lesTransports de l’Agglomération Orléanaise (SETAO)—replaced its NetApp Inc.storage with Pillar Data Systems Inc.’s Pillar Axiom disk arrays (Pillar hassince been acquired by Oracle Corp.) approximately four years ago and began using SSDs in 2009.

SETAO manages and stores data from buses, trams, vehicle radios, videosurveillance cameras, traffic lights, billing systems and electrical systems.The company makes real-time traffic information available via mobile devicesand surveillance data to law enforcement.

Technology: At Pillar’s suggestion, SETAO purchased its first solid-statedrive enclosure in July 2009. The company now has 600 GB of SSDs in eachof its three Pillar arrays: an Axiom 500 that also has 100 TB of SATA disks,an Axiom 500 with 16 TB of SATA and an Axiom 600 with 16 TB of SATA. Two arrays are located at the primary site in Orleans; another is approximately12 miles away.

SETAO also upgraded its servers and storage network with cutting-edgetechnology. The company runs Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) betweenits servers (which are equipped with Emulex Corp. converged networkadapters, or CNAs) and Cisco Systems Inc. Nexus 5000 top-of-rack switches,which split the 10 Gigabit Ethernet (10 GbE) and Fibre Channel (FC) traffic.The storage traffic connects over 4 Gbps FC to Brocade 300 FC switchesand to the Pillar Axiom arrays.

SETAO uses FalconStor Software Inc.’s IPStor storage virtualization tech-nology to replicate between the arrays. The company also used IPStor tomigrate data from the NetApp systems to Pillar arrays.


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Why SSDs in arrays: Olivier Parcollet, director of systems information atSETAO, prefers SSDs in a shared storage environment because he wants toimprove the performance of several applications, some Windows basedand others Linux based.

Using solid-state storage technology in a server would have restrictedthe performance boost to a single application unless he used virtualservers. Parcollet said he isn’t comfortable using SSDs in a physical serverwith virtual machines (VMs) because of the risk of application loss in theevent of a server failure.

“Because I have shareable storage on Fibre Channel, if I lose a server,an application could run on another one very, very quickly,” he said.

Results/Benefits: SETAO uses SSDs with four of its most important apps. Its initial use was for the traffic simulation software that plots busand tram routes, as well as the optimal number of vehicles and drivers. Application response time was approximately two hours on SATA disks, butit’s nearly instantaneous on solid-state drives, allowing SETAO to runa greater number of simulationsper day, according to Parcollet.

“We use three buses and sevendrivers less than the year before todo the same work,” Parcollet said,noting that SETAO’s financial teamclaimed the one-year savingsamounted to approximately 1 million euros ($1.39 million USD).

SETAO’s VMware Inc. virtualdesktop infrastructure (VDI) alsobenefited from SSDs. Provision-ing/booting 200 virtual desktopstook approximately 20 minutes with SATA drives, but takes only about fiveseconds with SSDs, Parcollet said.

Results were similar for queries to the Oracle databases that store meta-data about video images (which are archived on SATA disks) from 300 munic-ipal surveillance cameras installed throughout the metropolitan transportationnetwork. A search for a particular image, such as men wearing blue trousersand a red hat, might have taken 30 minutes with SATA drives. The searchcompletes instantly with SSDs, he said.

More recently, SETAO shifted approximately 100 GB of financial datafrom SATA disks to solid-state drives. Processing that once took threehours, according to Parcollet, now finishes in about two minutes.

Greatest challenge with SSDs: Implementing SSDs wasn’t especiallydifficult for SETAO. The staff installed the SSD enclosure, adjusted the graph-


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Provisioning/booting200 virtual desktopstook approximately 20 minutes with SATAdrives, but takes onlyabout five secondswith SSDs.

—OLIVIER PARCOLLET, director of systems information, SETAO

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ical user interface and changed the LUN’s quality of service (QoS) to premi-um. Shifting to premium QoS triggered the Pillar Axiom array to automati-cally move the designated data from SATA disks to SSDs.

The greater challenge was deciding which application data to prioritizeonto solid-state drives. Parcollet had no interest in solid-state storagetechnology with automatic tiering to shift the hottest data to SSDs. Auto-tiering could put unimportant data onto the SSDs, he reasoned; he wantedto make the application decisions himself.

Parcollet consulted Pillar’s built-in monitoring tools to determine themost I/O-intensive applications, but he didn’t move several applications to SSDs at the same time, nor did he shift entire applications.

“Only some parts of the applications need to be on SSD,” Parcollet said. “Allthe data doesn’t need to stay in SSDs; only the more accessed [data does].”

For instance, only the controlfiles, indexes and “redo” logs ofSETAO’s Oracle databases makeuse of SSDs. With VDI, SETAOstores only the gold image onSSDs and spreads the end-userdata across SATA drives.

“One VM per user consumesonly about five I/O per second,” Parcollet said. “There’s no need to use SSD every time for VDI. But SSD is good to generate the images very, very quickly for provisioning.”

Peer advice: Parcollet recommends SSDs for small, high-transaction,I/O-intensive applications rather than large applications. “We cannot installall applications on SSD because it’s very, very expensive,” he said, notingthe company’s SSDs cost approximately five times more than its SATAdisks. Pillar’s list price for a “brick” with 64 GB SSD drives (12 active drives,one hot spare) is $49,000.

Parcollet cautioned that all storage features may not be available whenusing solid-state drives. He said he can’t use Pillar’s thin provisioning withSSDs, for instance.

Addressing another potential downside of SSDs, Parcollet said he’s notworried about the drives wearing out. “I asked Pillar the question when Ibought the SSD drives, and they guaranteed that the [SSD] life will be aslong as a traditional drive because there’s a [memory] reserve on eachdrive,” he said.


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“There’s no need to use SSD every time forVDI. But SSD is good togenerate the imagesvery, very quickly forprovisioning.”

—OLIVIER PARCOLLET, director of systems information, SETAO

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CASE STUDY 2Ultimate Software Group: Flash cache provides assist withteam-based application development

Background: Ultimate Software Group Inc. in Weston, Fla., provides hu-man resource and payroll Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) to more than 2,000customers. A 200-member development team writes and tests an averageof 21 application iterations, known as application builds, per week.

Technology: In June 2009, Ultimate Software Group purchased twoDRAM-based 16 TB performance acceleration module (PAM) cards fromNetApp. The PAM cards functioned as read caches for the organization’spair of clustered NetApp FAS3170s, which store data from Microsoft Corp. SQLServer databases, VMware VMs and file shares, and serve as the centralrepository for the daily application builds.

In 2010, Ultimate Software Group bought two of NetApp’s newer 512 GBFlash Cache (PAM II) cards for the FAS3170s and moved the lower-capacityDRAM-based PAM cards to the pair of FAS3140s that IT uses for perform-ance, stability and reliability (PSR) testing.

Why choose solid-state cacheover SSDs: “It was a lot cheaperthan buying SSDs for 30 TB ofstorage,” said Brian Goldberg, director of infrastructure and deployment strategy at UltimateSoftware Group.

Results/Benefits: The PAMcards store in cache memory theapplication builds that developersrequest most often, and readspeeds have increased dramaticallyin response, Goldberg said.

“We write [the application build]once, and then we read it manytimes, which is why the PAM cards were very attractive,” Goldberg said. “Instead of the filer going down the loop to get the actual data from thephysical disks, bringing it back and then sending the response to the user,it basically goes to the cache, gets it and sends it right to the user a lotfaster.”

Real-time performance monitoring showed IOPS was far lower with the PAM cards in place. The load on the two NetApp FAS3170s, which storemore than 37 TB of data, has decreased 40% to 50% since the installationof the DRAM-based PAM cards, Goldberg said.

Adding the new Flash Cache helped the developer team increase the


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“We write [the applica-tion build] once, andthen we read it manytimes, which is whythe PAM cards werevery attractive.”

—BRIAN GOLDBERG, director of infrastructure and deployment

strategy, Ultimate Software Group

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number of application builds per week with no impact on performance.“We’ve been growing our products and our teams and the number of

environments each team owns,” he said. “We knew we were going to bedeploying more and more, and we had concerns that if we kept hitting theNetApp [FAS boxes], we would have performance problems and we wouldneed a bigger filer.”

Greatest challenge: Goldberg said he would like to add more PAM cards,but the cost is prohibitive. Ultimate Software Group spent close to $30,000on its initial pair of 16 TB DRAM-based PAM cards and more than $100,000on the second set of 512 GB Flash Cache/PAM II cards, he said.

But, he added, “We definitely felt that the value we’ve gotten from themis worth it.”

Peer advice: “I would definitely get them from the beginning,” Goldbergrecommended. “I wouldn’t say, ‘Oh, let me set up my filer without them,and I can always add them later.’ You’ll definitely reap the benefits if youstart using them from Day 1.”

CASE STUDY 3Solid-state-only arrays/appliances conserve space, power for logistics company

Background: Odyssey Logistics & Technology Corp., based in Danbury,Conn., provides managed logistics and services to the global chemical andprocess manufacturing industries. Its primary data center is located inCharlotte, N.C., and its secondary data center is in Raleigh. Odyssey sup-plies information such as carrier selection, rack scheduling, transit time,shipment tracking and billing to customers through SaaS-based apps.

“The thing that’s hard to try to manage is how many electronic transac-tions we do on the back side at any given time when you have users on thefront side,” said Brad Massey, Odyssey’s director of IT support services. “Let’ssay we have major retailers in the U.S. who send us batches of 4,000 or 5,000orders that need to be planned pretty quickly. We might be load optimizingthose shipments on the back end while we have people on our website trying to do regular queries. We still need to offer acceptable performance.”

Technology: Approximately four years ago, Odyssey Logistics & Technologypurchased Texas Memory Systems’ RamSan-400, a 128 GB DRAM device; sixmonths later, Odyssey upped the scalability with a NAND flash-based Ram-San-500, a 2 TB NAND flash device. About a year ago, Odyssey added a 5 TBRamSan-630 flash-only array to run its data warehouse and analytics.

“All of our customers see very consistent performance because of thesolid-state arrays on the database,” Massey said. “Prior to that, we alwaysseemed to be playing catch-up with adding spindles to the storage array


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so we could keep our database performance up to speed.”Odyssey reserves its RamSans almost exclusively for its Oracle work-

loads, running the entire databases on the RamSans. All the company’scustom-built and packaged applications rely on the Oracle data stores,from the accounting system to the IBM WebSphere partner gateway.

“That’s where we really need the throughput,” Massey said. “Our data-base requires the ability to burst our I/O very quickly, for sometimes longor short periods of time. Whether you’re looking at SSD or disk-based systems,you’ve got to size the systems to your peak I/O whether or not you’re goingto use it all the time.”

In addition to the RamSans,Odyssey Logistics & Technologyrecently purchased five 100 GBflash drives for one of its EMCClariion CX4 arrays. One drive willserve as a hot spare and anotherfor parity, leaving approximately300 GB usable. The most likely usecase for the new SSDs will be aVDI project.

“If you have a lot of VMs boot-ing up at the same time in a first-of-the-morning scenario, you cancreate an I/O storm,” Massey noted.“You really need your golden images to be pulled from veryquickly.”

Why solid-state-only array/appliance: Odyssey doesn’t own its datacenters; it operates at colocation facilities. So, energy-efficient, space-saving solid-state appliances hold extra cost-saving appeal over traditionaldisk arrays.

“When you look at a RamSan device and the amount of I/O they’re ableto pack in a 3U device, as opposed to all of the disk enclosures and thespinning disks you would have to have to get for the same amount ofIOPS,” Massey said, “it’s really a compelling story.”

Server-based storage doesn’t factor into Odyssey’s long-term plans.Odyssey Logistics & Technology runs Cisco Unified Computing System(UCS) diskless servers. “Most of our configurations at the data center runboot from SAN, so we typically eliminate all of the disks out of serverswhere we can,” Massey said.

Results/Benefits: Waits of eight to 10 seconds on webpage refreshes,and occasional response times as high as 30 seconds under especiallyheavy loads, dropped to subsecond times for most queries with the shift


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“If you have a lot ofVMs booting up at thesame time in a first-of-the-morning scenario,you can create an I/Ostorm. You really needyour golden images tobe pulled from veryquickly.”

—BRAD MASSEY, director of IT support services, Odyssey Logistics & Technology

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from hard disk drives to solid-state storage, according to Massey.DRAM-based devices tend to work better than flash at writes; the flash

works fine for reads, noted Eric Brown, a database administrator at Odyssey.“We have an extremely high read-only environment,” Massey added. “If

our profile was heavy write, we would certainly make different decisions.”Odyssey used to refresh its data warehouse only periodically through-

out the day, but with the RamSans, it’s able to crunch much of the data inreal-time for customers accessing its Web dashboards.

Peer advice: Massey recommends IT shops consider solid-state driveswhere they need optimal performance. He also urged them to factor inspace and power requirements when comparing the acquisition cost oftraditional disk-based storage arrays and solid-state storage technology. 2

Carol Sliwa is a senior writer in the Storage Media Group.Solid-state storage for

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SOLID-STATE DRIVES (SSDs) may now be affordable enough to merit seriousconsideration when planning a storage system.

If you’re thinking of buying SSDs based on flash memory technology,it’s worth learning about the differences between multi-level cell (MLC)and single-level cell (SLC) flash.

MLC vs. SLC:Which flash SSD is right for you?

The type of flash SSD you choose depends on the performance you need and the price you want to pay, but the

differences aren’t as great as you may think. By Manek Dubash

STORAGE


As with any technology, there are tradeoffs, depending on which of thetwo types of flash SSD you select. MLC flash is the most common and isoften found in consumer-grade products such as cameras, phones, USBmemory sticks and portable music players, but it’s also present in someenterprise storage products.

The main characteristic of MLCflash is its low price, but it suffersfrom higher wear rates and lowerwrite performance compared withSLC technology. SLC is faster andmuch more reliable—but also moreexpensive—and is featured in thebest-performing storage arrays.

In practice, however, the differ-ences aren’t quite as clear as youmight expect. To see how this technology is developing, its applicationand where it’s heading, we need to look at how the two types of flashmemory work and how they’re sold.

But storage sales discussions aren’t normally about the tradeoffs ofMLC vs. SLC, according to Valdis Filks, research director for storage tech-nologies and strategies at Gartner Inc. “This is normally hidden by imple-mentation,” he said. “In other words, it’s up to the enclosure manufacturerof the storage array, and it’s the controller that’s more important than theunderlying storage technology.”

MLC vs. SLC HEAD TO HEADVendors may prefer not to discuss the differences between the technologies,but understanding the underlying technology can influence deploymentstrategies. So, what are the key differences between MLC and SLC flashSSDs?

All flash memory suffers from wear, which occurs because erasing orprogramming a cell subjects it to wear due to the voltage applied. Eachtime this happens, a charge is trapped in the transistor’s gate dielectricand causes a permanent shift in the cell’s characteristics, which, after anumber of cycles, manifests as a failed cell.

SLC uses a single cell to store one bit of data. MLC memory is morecomplex and can interpret four digital states from a signal stored in a single cell. This makes it denser for a given area and so is cheaper to produce, but it wears out faster.

An MLC cell is typically rated at 10,000 erase/write cycles, while an SLC


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SLC is faster andmuch more reliable—but also more expen-sive—and is featuredin the best-perform-ing storage arrays.

STORAGE


cell might last 10 times that before failing. However, manufacturers ofproducts consisting of MLC cells can and do have ameliorating technologiesand techniques at their disposal.

According to Andrew Buss, service director at analyst firm Freeform Dynamics Ltd., amelioration techniques used by most vendors include wearleveling, which moves write cycles around the chip so cells wear evenly;on-device deduplication, which reduces the volumes of data written and so lowers wear; redundancy, which reserves a portion of the device’s capacity to replace cells as they fail; and write optimization, which storesdata writes so they can be made into large chunks to reduce the numberof write operations. The emerging term for MLC products that incorporatesuch techniques is enterprise MLC (EMLC).

Most such techniques are implemented in the device controller—the interface between device and computer—with companies such as Sand-Force Inc. and Intel Corp. among the most advanced in implementing suchtechniques, according to Buss. And despite the endurance issues relatedto SSDs, vendors say they remain more reliable than spinning media.

USE CASESAccording to Gartner’s Filks, the implementation determines thetechnology. So applications such as high-speed databases, whose performance is measured in terms of transactions per second, shouldbe matched to the appropriate tech-nology selected on the basis of price/performance.

“It’s about serving more customers in a given time. That’s what SSDvendors talk about,” Filks said.

Despite this, MLC and SLC tend to be used for different applications duelargely to the four-fold price difference per gigabyte between them. As wehave seen, MLC can be found in consumer-grade products and in the enter-prise where performance, while important, isn’t the primary consideration.

When used in the same storage system, the two types of SSD can betiered in the same way as tiering with spinning media; most storageproduct vendors include a form of automated SSD tiering, Freeform Dynamics’ Buss said. SLC typically tops the storage tier tree in financialservices organizations, where high-speed access to large databases isessential and price is a secondary issue. Buss said he believes future


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“It’s about servingmore customers in a given time. That’swhat SSD vendorstalk about.”—VALDIS FILKS, research director for storage

technologies and strategies, Gartner

STORAGE


products will increasingly be integrated with both flash SSD types andspinning media in performance/cost-based tiers.

“Most enterprise applications will rely on a form of database and sowill need SSDs. An example is content management systems, where anend user is waiting for things to happen; also Exchange servers, websites, media storage—all of which you can use MLC for,” Buss said. “However, you still need to do due diligence and buy appropriately. There are newsolutions coming along to make MLC better.”

End-user Roger Bearpark, assistant head of information and communi-cations technology (ICT) at the London borough of Hillingdon, has installed520 GB of MLC-based SSD-based storage into his Compellent arrays. “MLCis poorer on endurance and performance, but is up to three or four [times]better on price,” he said. “We got a phenomenal rate of return on investmentby putting small amounts of active data on SSD, which produced a 13-foldimprovement in access times.”

FUTURESAccording to Gartner’s Filks, SSDs won’t replace spinning disks. “Everyonesays SSDs will replace disks, maybe in about 15 to 20 years’ time, but asSSD prices drop, so do those of disks,” he said. “And SSD prices will neverfall as far as disk because factories can’t make enough. It means only theworking data set needs to be on SSD, and that’s about 5% to 15% of the total.”

However, Filks predicted that SSDs could eventually replace tape as adeep archive technology because it offers similar benefits—nonvolatilityand zero power usage when not in use—although he predicted this willtake 10 years to 20 years.

As prices fall and reliability techniques improve, it seems likely that MLCtechnology’s price advantage will keep it ahead of SLC for all but the mostdemanding of applications, as it remains significantly faster and more robustthan spinning media. 2

Manek Dubash is a UK-based freelance journalist.


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OLID-STATE STORAGE is being adopted in the enterprise butnot at the pace that many observers originally predicted.While there are a variety of reasons for this, one that can’tbe ignored is the cost. Solid-state storage—which, for theenterprise, is typically based on single-level cell (SLC)flash—is expensive. In many cases, if your IT shop doesnot have a specific application performance problemthat’s impacting corporate revenue, you’re not likely to buySLC-based solid-state storage. There are many applicationsthat could benefit from the solid-state performance boost,but for most of them, that boost hasn’t yet been shown to

be worth the investment.But multi-level cell (MLC) flash in enterprise arrays may be just the

solution you need to make the solid-state jump. MLC flash is cheaper thanSLC, making solid-state technology more appealing for a broader set of applications, perhaps those that could benefit from a measurable but notmassive jump in performance.


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Using

MLC flash memory in

enterprise arraysFind out how enterprise MLC flash can be the right solid-state storage option for ITorganizations looking for a measurable

increase in performance without the cost of SLC-based flash. By George Crump

s

STORAGE


WHAT IS MLC FLASH?Solid-state flash drives are made up of memory cells. Traditionally, withSLC memory, those cells are written to once per segment of data. MLCflash, on the other hand, writes two data segments to the same cell, effec-tively doubling the capacity of the flash storage. However, this methodmeans MLC storage has lower performance and reliability than SLC memory.MLC flash is also likely to wear out faster than SLC because flash storagecan handle only so many write cycles per cell. As a result, MLC flash storagehas been relegated to consumer devices like laptops and phones. But sig-nificant improvements have been made in both the understanding of MLCand in the technology that surrounds it, and some suppliers are now pro-posing its use in the enterprise.

PROTECTING MLC FLASH STORAGEWhile it’s true that MLC will fail more often than SLC flash, advancementsin intelligence around MLC and how it’s protected are changing the dynamics.First, MLC production processes have improved; some suppliers now offereMLC (enterprise MLC) with write cycles as high as six times that ofstandard MLC (30,000 vs. 5,000). Sec-ond, the process of writing data tothe cells has improved such that nosingle cell of the flash disk becomeshot; wear leveling ensures writes arespread evenly across the availablecells. Third, most if not all eMLC systems have spare unreported capacity, so if a cell does wear out,its data can be written to a new driveand cell. Besides these special con-siderations around the flash memoryitself, it’s important to remember that in many cases this memory will beinstalled in an enterprise-class storage system, so technologies like RAIDand mirroring can be used to provide further protection from failure.

MLC FLASH MEMORY PERFORMANCE ISSUESNow let’s talk about the performance concerns around MLC. While MLC isn’tas fast as SLC, it is faster than a single 15,000 rpm drive in both read andwrite operations. Many data centers are looking for a measurable but cost-


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While it’s true thatMLC will fail moreoften than SLC flash,advancements inintelligence aroundMLC and how it’s pro-tected are changingthe dynamics.

STORAGE


correct performance boost. SLC flash may be overkill whereas MLC may bejust right.

The big limiter in the performance of MLC, or that of any flash-based solid-state drive (SSD), is when the drive reaches what’s called steady state.This is when the drive has been completely filled up for the first time andthere are no more empty cells to put data into. From that point forward, anynew data the flash controller needs to write must be written to cells thathave no in-use data on them. The not-in-use data is erased—which in theflash world means the cell is written to with zeros—and then the new datais written to the cell. Obviously, these two steady-state writes take time;factor in the parity writing in a RAID algorithm and the performance getsworse. And this write cycle can deliver erratic and unpredictable I/O per-formance, especially when the system is busy with a lot of write traffic and is near capacity.

To combat this problem, most flash controllers now have the ability to do something called garbage collection. During idle times the flashcontroller will scan the drive looking for cells that store data marked asremovable by the operating system (typically a delete command) and per-form the erase write ahead of time. Garbage collection is more importantin MLC or eMLC-based systems be-cause they’re slower at processing a write cycle (more data per cell), sohaving those cells cleaned out aheadof time is critical. Another techniquestorage systems use is preservingsome flash memory as unallocated.For example, if 20% is left in reserve,in most cases the write cycle wouldn’thave to be performed while data iswritten to the drive. The flash con-troller will use the spare cells.

MLC flash makes sense for ITshops that have applications where performance needs to be improved but not to an extreme level. There’s enough technology and redundancysurrounding these systems that they can be implemented with confidenceinto many environments without the risk of data loss. 2

George Crump is founder and president of analyst firm Storage Switzerland.


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MLC flash makessense for IT shopsthat have applicationswhere performanceneeds to be improvedbut not to an extremelevel.

dSSD technology making inroads with SMBsAmong users, solid-state is gaining ground as a sensibleoption to protect against data loss and to reduce power consumption. As a result, companies of all sizes are evaluating the technology. By Alan Earls


ESPITE relatively high costs, solid-state drive (SSD) technology iscontinuing to attract new users,according to a survey of more than 500businesses conducted earlier this year.

The survey, conducted by Kroll Ontrack, indicated thatnearly 70% of respondents use solid-state or flash technology, or at least have plans to implement the technology in the near future.

Approximately 75% of respondents indicated they believed SSD tech-nology delivered higher performance than spinning disk drives. They alsoreported a perception that solid-state is a safer medium to protect againstdata loss and that it consumes less power, and is therefore more environ-mentally friendly.

Some of those issues were on the mind of Les Barnes, asenior vice president of information technology at Bankof Fayetteville in Arkansas, when he faced a SQLServer performance problem.

“Our two biggest applications arecheck imaging and our systemthat manages merchant


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STORAGE


processing. They were both SQL Server based and both had developed anannoying habit of ‘pausing’ frequently, causing consternation for usersand slowing the flow of work,” Barnes said.

Barnes said he suspected part of the problem was related to slow I/O response as a consequence of disk access time. So approximately 14months ago, he installed Dell Inc.’s EqualLogic storage products, includingthe PS6000XVS, a hybrid storage array that includes both 15K SAS drivesand SSDs. He said the implementation of SSD technology was an elementin a broader effort to implement tiered storage, since the XVS system incorporated both SAS drives and higher speed SSDs.

The problem disappeared as soonas the applications had access to theSSDs, Barnes said. Now, he said, withthe SSDs in place, database latency“has dropped from the low single digits to less than a millisecond.”

According to analysts, Barnes is far from alone in finding solacefor storage troubles in solid-statestorage adoption.

“Vendors from the smallest start-ups to the largest IT vendors aregetting in the game,” said David Hill,an analyst at Mesabi Group LLC. “Solutions are being touted at thearray level, the network level, at thehost level or even as DAS [direct-attached storage].”

The reason is simple, accordingto Hill. SSD technology promises toeliminate poor application performance that can arise because of I/Obottlenecks, such as the performance gap between server speeds andhard disk drive (HDD) speed, or as an unintended consequence of a highlevel of server virtualization.

Hill said there’s still a question of how much of a monetary value canbe tied to that performance improvement. If increased revenue (and con-sequently profit) exceed the added cost and management of SSDs, thensolid-state drives would be a good fit.

He said SSDs may also be able to offer other improvements, such asbeing able to speed backup jobs that need to be done within a particulartime window.


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“Vendors from thesmallest startups tothe largest IT vendorsare getting in thegame. Solutions arebeing touted at thearray level, the network level, at thehost level or even asDAS [direct-attachedstorage].”

—DAVID HILL, analyst, Mesabi Group LLC

STORAGE


“That could result in extra cost, but the business may be able to justifyit. In addition, there may be some cost tradeoffs,” Hill said. “UnderutilizedHDDs that SSDs render unnecessary for performance purposes may berepurposed for other tasks, and thus defer the need to purchase moredisk storage for a time.”

Over a period of years, Hill said, SSDs will displace most if not all high-performance SAS and Fibre Channel (FC) drives, but not capacity-orientedSATA drives.

“If there’s a performance issue, then SSDs can be evaluated as a solu-tion,” he said, regardless of company size. For instance, a large enterprisemay not have application performance issues, but a small- and medium-sized business (SMB) may be dependent upon an application that criesout for greater performance, Hill said.

“The problem, and not the size of the company, is the determinant,” Hillsaid. On the other hand, smaller companies may not have the resourcesto evaluate all the SSD solutions properly when compared to companiesthat have a larger IT staff, he noted.

Mark Peters, an analyst at Enterprise Strategy Group, said there’s nodefining characteristic of the typical user or use case with SSD technology.

“Some SMBs may literally put everything on solid-state in the server,while others are specing a limited amount of ‘turbo boost’ in their stor-age subsystems,” he said.

Peters also said the economics of using SSDs “aren’t as scary as manythink” because organizations have had to use more spinning disk re-sources to achieve performance goals that may be within easy reach oflower-capacity SSDs.

“It’s still a small market when measured in revenue and terabyte pen-etration terms, but its impact is about IOPS and performance rather thancapacity,” he said. “I’d go so far as to say that every storage systemsvendor has an offering, and often multiple ones. And the use case rangeis essentially as a storage tier [persistent data] or for solid-state to beused as a cache.”

Peters said the adoption of SSD technology is poised to grow dramati-cally among a range of industries and organizations.

“Usage isn’t limited to one company size, type or industry, as solid-stateis simply democratic, horizontally applicable fast storage,” he said. 2

Alan Earls is a frequent contributor to various sites within the TechTarget StorageMedia Group.


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wSTORAGE Essential Guide to Solid-State Storage Implementation Choices

ITH THE RISE of server virtualization and the general trend toward moredata, at one time or another most organizations need more storage per-formance, particularly IOPS. At the device level, solid-state storage seemsto be the technology to provide it. But the devil’s in the details, which inthis case means implementation. Choosing how solid-state storage is put


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CHANNEL SPIN:Implementing SSD in

a cache applianceLearn about the benefits of using solid-state storage

in a cache appliance, how the appliance compares with other SSD implementations and why storage

VARs should pay attention. By Eric Slack

STORAGE


into a storage infrastructure can determine how effectively performanceis delivered to applications, which in the end is what really matters.

Implementation of solid-state storage can take a number of differentphysical forms, like drive form-factor solid-state drives (SSDs) that replacehard disk drives in a server, or storage array or flash PCI Express (PCIe)boards that install into a server. Another alternative can be a dedicatedflash storage array or appliance installed on the storage network.

Implementation can take different logical forms as well, like creating anew “tier 0” high-performance storage area in which to move performance-critical application data during periods of highest activity. Or it can be acache appliance that holds a copy of this data that’s still maintained on theexisting storage areas and updated when their cache “session” is terminated.

We’ll focus on the latter of these, the caching appliance implementation,in which an independent storage device is installed in the environment andshared by one or more servers or storage systems—either block or NAS.We’ll detail the advantages of cachingappliances and discuss some impli-cations for value-added resellers(VARs) selling these solutions.

WHY A CACHE APPLIANCE MAKES SENSESimply replacing hard disk drives in aserver or existing storage array withSSDs can be the easiest solution. But it often means the SSDs can’t beused to their full capability becauseexisting hard drive controller archi-tectures typically don’t provide theIOPS or connectivity SSDs require. Inaddition, the lack of density and costper gigabyte of these implementations can force users to settle for less (or more) capacity than needed, resulting in efficiency tradeoffs and low-er performance. Dedicating SSDs to specific servers or storage systemsalso reduces opportunities to share this high-priced resource, which results in fewer applications receiving a performance boost, fewer systems being included in the cost justification and increased manage-ment overhead.

A caching appliance isn’t a storage array but an independent high-speeddevice that’s purpose-built for solid-state drives and can be shared by mul-tiple back-end storage systems. These standalone systems can address a


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A caching applianceisn’t a storage arraybut an independenthigh-speed devicethat’s purpose-builtfor solid-state drivesand can be shared bymultiple back-endstorage systems.

q

q

q

qq

STORAGE


number of issues the industry has had implementing solid-state storagedevices in its quest to improve application performance:

Shared performance and utilization benefits. IOPS requirements of stor-age devices are constantly changing depending on the workloads of theservers they’re supporting. While installing SSDs into a specific NAS orblock storage array can improve performance, it often results in periods oflow utilization when the servers using that individual storage system areless active. An independent caching appliance, on the other hand, can beshared across multiple storage systems, enabling higher asset utilizationand improved application performance for more servers. It can also providebetter ROI justification for an SSD upgrade project as the costs are spreadacross more applications. This can make even more specialized devices,like DRAM, cost-effective, further improving performance of the appliance.In some use cases, a caching appliance can turn one or more midrangedisk systems into a “performance” solution for less money than a compa-rable high-end system.

Capacity benefits. A shared cache appliance can provide enough capacityto pin an entire data set into solid-state storage. This can result in betterperformance with fewer cache misses and better efficiency, as data move-ment between solid-state and disk storage is greatly reduced. And the effective capacity of the cache can be extended by combining multiplestorage types, like SSD and high-speed disk, into the same appliance.

Lower processing overhead than tiered storage. Compared with a tier 0 implementation of solid-state storage, this appliance is a true cache, which means it takes a copy of the most active or performance-criticaldata sets. Tiered storage solutions that typically reside on the storage con-troller move data into and out of the high-speed storage space, generatingprocessing overhead and reducing efficiency. These automated tiering systems also require a warm-up period in which usage information aboutnew data sets is accumulated before they can move data, sometimes taking hours or days.

No impact on data protection. Because the data set is maintained on theprimary storage system, data protection isn’t affected by the caching appli-ance. Storage services—like snapshots, replication and data deduplication—can be kept on the existing back-end storage systems and not added to thecache CPU, helping to maintain performance.

Nondisruptive implementation. Finally, implementation of the caching appliance is less disruptive because it involves only copying data sets, not moving them from existing storage.


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Sometimes referred to as a “memory array” as opposed to a storage array, caching appliances are designed from the ground up to support solid-state storage. This means their architectures provide the IOPS re-quired to “feed” many more solid-state devices than a traditional storagearray can. This in turn produces better storage density and higher capacity,with the benefits mentioned above. It also eliminates the potential situa-tion of legacy disk array shelves running nearly empty because they cansupport only a handful of solid-state drives. Besides density, this results inbetter efficiency as more flash cells can be made available in the memoryarray for overhead processes like garbage collection.

BOTTOM LINE FOR VARsFor organizations that need better application performance, solid-statestorage technologies are certainly a viable option. But given the number of SSD products available and because they aren’t a straight “plug replace-ment” upgrade for spinning disk drives, many VARs’ customers may needsome help designing a solid-state solution. This should mean opportunityfor storage integrators.

Caching appliances can supply VARs with a strong solution candidatewhen it comes to a solid-state storage performance upgrade. These systemscan be used to spread the performance of SSDs across multiple storage systems, enabling better ROI than putting SSDs into individual storage arrays or servers. They can also provide the density and capacity to supportlarger data sets, thereby improving efficiency and lowering overall costs.From an implementation perspective, a caching appliance can be less dis-ruptive than adding an SSD tier 0 to an existing storage infrastructure andcan complement the storage services and data protection already in place.While not the only solid-state storage alternative available to storage VARs,caching appliances should certainly be on the line card. 2

Eric Slack is a senior analyst at Storage Switzerland.


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Essential Guide to Solid-State Storage Implementation Choices

is a SearchSolidStateStorage.come-product.

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©2012 TechTarget Inc. No part of this publication may be transmitted or reproduced in any form or by anymeans without written permission from the publisher. For permissions or reprint information, please con-

tact Mike Kelly, vice president and group publisher, Storage Media Group, TechTarget([email protected]).

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