E-Guide BENEFITS AND DRAWBACKS OF SSD, CACHING, AND PCIE BASED SSD

E-Guide BENEFITS AND DRAWBACKS OF SSD, CACHING, AND PCIE BASED SSD

A modern trend in IT infrastructures reveals that more and more companies are installing solid-state storage and caching. Additionally, storage administrators seeking out SSDs solutions are also considering PCIe-based deployments. However is the deployment of SSD s in too many areas of an infrastructure diminishing performance? This e-guide examines this questions as well as PCIe-based SSDs implementation drawbacks and. PAGE 2 OF 10

DOES SSD AND CACHING EVERYWHERE CREATE A PERFORMANCE BOTTLENECK? Solid-state storage and caching are being installed everywhere in physical IT infrastructures (server, network and storage). Solid-state storage can be installed in the server as either a PCIe card or a solid-state drive coupled with an intelligent software caching engine. There are network products that now use solid-state storage to accelerate and manage storage network traffic. Many storage products now offer some kind of integrated solid-state storage, such as all-flash arrays, intelligent dynamic auto-tiering, hybrid arrays or solid-state storage added to existing traditional controller-based HDD storage arrays. Using this high-performance technology is great for accelerating a single application to a whole IT infrastructure, which can reduce the amount of infrastructure needed to meet SLAs and save in Capex and Opex if the infrastructure is well-architected. But is using solid state in too many areas of an infrastructure causing PAGE 3 OF 10

diminished returns on performance? PROBLEMS WHERE ONCE THERE WERE NONE When a storage bottleneck is alleviated, this can create new performance bottlenecks or move bottlenecks to other resources. For example, a popular economical solid-state solution being used today is server-side solid-state storage coupled with a software caching engine using write-through caching with optimized writes sent immediately to the back-end storage. But is the back-end storage configured correctly to handle these optimized writes? If not, this could create a new bottleneck with the back-end storage controller's write cache and even possibly a bigger performance bottleneck for write misses to hard disk drives if there is no solid-state storage tier. An initial indicator if writes are properly optimized is to monitor response times to ensure they stay under SLA and workload performance threshold requirements. On the positive side, the server-side solid-state storage solution can dramatically reduce the amount of read cache needed for storage controllers since the server-side caching engine is handling all reads. This frees the read controller cache for use with non-accelerated workloads. In addition, a high read cache hit rate on a storage controller is usually an indicator of good PAGE 4 OF 10

performance, but this can be misinterpreted in this example since all of the reads are cached on the server, and the read cache on the storage controller is no longer used. OTHER PERFORMANCE-IMPEDING CONSIDERATIONS In clustered virtual environments using advanced features, such as VMware's vmotion, DRS or Storage DRS, with server-side solid-state storage and a supported caching engine, there are particular performance considerations to deal with. For example, the cache needs to be "rewarmed" on a new host after a virtual machine has been migrated from one host to another host. While data can be copied to solid-state storage from one host to another very quickly, getting the right data back into cache can take time, since that data has to be accessed and then reevaluated for cache worthiness. This means an application that was likely accustomed to high performance on solid state may perform at a hard disk drive level until the cache re-warming process is complete. This can take longer than expected, depending on the workload intensity of the cluster. Another performance bottleneck to consider for clustered environments using server-side solid-state storage is the inter-nodal traffic that goes on PAGE 5 OF 10

among the distributed PCIe cache cards in each server of the cluster. This introduces its own overhead that should be monitored and managed. Many storage systems have been redesigned to handle large volumes of I/O requests to maximize the use of integrated solid-state storage. Traditional storage controllers are being redesigned not only to handle the additional performance of solid state but also the unique characteristics of solid-state behavior versus the mechanics of hard-disk drives. All-flash arrays and flash controllers offer the higher performance needed to meet the increased demands of today's IT requirements. I/O-intensive applications and environments will introduce new storage bottlenecks faster than the average application environment. New storage systems are able to handle a larger volume of I/O requests with solid-state storage, which eliminates many storage bottlenecks traditionally seen in HDD storage. As the use of solid-state storage matures, some IT departments are seeing a growing number for network performance bottlenecks in their infrastructures. The next stop for application acceleration will be in the network infrastructure. PAGE 6 OF 10

PCIE-BASED SOLID-STATE STORAGE IMPLEMENTATION BENEFITS AND DRAWBACKS Storage administrators scoping out solid-state storage will likely consider PCIe-based deployments, at least in part because that method enables a more direct -- and therefore faster -- connection to the server than other serverbased approaches to solid-state storage. Indeed, according to SearchStorage. com's Storage Priorities for 2010 survey, 7% of respondents already have implemented solid-state storage, 14% will implement it this year and another 40% will evaluate it this year. Our special report on solid-state storage via PCIe cards examines how the technology works, what the major are, which companies are in the market right now and which ones are preparing products, what share of the market the technology has and the best use cases for it. In addition, our package offers two case studies of companies that have already implemented solid-state storage via PCIe cards: One company runs one of the largest websites in the world, and the other is a stock analysis software company; both had an imperative to reduce I/O bottlenecks to improve performance. PAGE 7 OF 10

Finally, in a podcast storage expert Greg Schulz discusses the range of solidstate storage options on the market, and gives implementation advice and tips on optimizing database performance. PCIE-BASED SOLID-STATE STORAGE SEES UPTICK IN SHIPMENTS, USAGE Server-based solid-state storage is gaining in popularity as vendors increase their shipments of PCIe cards, and more companies are expected to join the fray soon. Learn about the two companies with PCIe-based solid-state storage products already on the market -- Fusion-io and Texas Memory Systems -- and how their approaches differ. HP IO ACCELERATOR CARDS LET ANSWERS.COM IMPLEMENT SOLID-STATE STORAGE FOR DATABASE PERFORMANCE BOOST Faced with the need to improve database performance on its Web servers, Answers.com implemented solid-state storage. With Hewlett-Packard (HP) Co. IO Accelerator cards (custom-built for HP by Fusion-io), the company saw a 900% increase in the number of queries each database server can handle. Read about Answers.com's evaluation and implementation process, and find out about the work the company did before deployment to gain the best results PAGE 8 OF 10

from its solid-state storage investment. RAMSAN-20 NAND FLASH SOLID-STATE DRIVES PROVIDE FASTER DATA DELIV- ERY FOR SOFTWARE COMPANY After scoping out a number of options, stock analysis software company VectorVest settled on RamSan-20 NAND flash-based solid-state drives from Texas Memory Systems for ultra-fast delivery of data to customers over the Internet. Find out about VectorVest's path to the RamSan-20, how it optimized its drives to get the performance it was looking for, the implementation challenges the company faced and how it justified the price premium for SSD compared with hard disk. PAGE 9 OF 10

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