You missed this note about the new high-density Fusion-io Octal

Buried in SSD News — there’s this:

So what can you do with an Octal powered server that you couldn’t do before?

One trivial example is that if you add some dedupe, compression and an iSCSIstack you can easily create a 1U storage appliance with maybe 100TB to 200TB of fast virtual storage which (because of the low latency) will run rings around similar bulk storage SSDs which use 2.5″ SSDs in RAID.

Here’s the direct link:  SSD NEWS

(you’ll have to scroll about 1/3rd the way down the page)

Review of Virident FlashMAX MLC cards (repost)

Percona has just published a new analysis of  Virident’s entry in the PCIe flash space — you can find the full review here:

Full Percona Review of Virident FlashMAX MLC

Highlights:  Review of Virident FlashMAX MLC cards

November 10, 2011 By Vadim Tkachenko

I have been following Virident for a long time (e.g. 
http://www.mysqlperformanceblog.com/2010/06/15/virident-tachion-new-player-on-flash-pci-e-cards-market/
). They have great PCIe Flash cards based on SLC NAND.
I always thought that Virident needed to come up with an MLC card, and I am happy to see they have finally done so.

At Virident’s request, I performed an evaluation of their MLC card to assess how it handles MySQL workload. As I am very satisfied with the results, I wish to share my findings in this post.

But first, I wish to offer an overview of the card.

Virident FlashMax Cards are available in 1TB and 1.4TB usable capacities (the models names are M1000 and M1400)

These specified sizes are already available for end users.
I evaluated M1400 (1.4TB size) model, which I will discuss:

Because Virident has competition in the SSD market, they have stated their goals to distinguish themselves from their competitors:

• Stability of performance: That is to minimize variations in throughput
• Better response times: This is very important for database performance and I appreciate that Virident has made this a priority.
• Performance at full capacity: As we know, SSD-based cards have special characteristics; the throughput declines when space utilization increases. Virident’s design/programming minimizes this decline.
• RAID5 on the card: The card comes with RAID5 support on the card to give better protection.

To deal with a throughput decline, all Flash cards have reserved space. The 1.4TB card, that I have, internally holds 2TB worth of space.

This additional space is used for two purposes:

1. To amortize write-intensive workloads, by using additional space.
2. To have replacements for failed MLC modules. When one MLC module fails, it is marked as unused, and gets replaced by one from the pool of reserved modules.

Internally, Virident uses 25nm Intel NAND Flash MLC modules, this is the same technology that Intel uses for the Intel SSD 320 cards. 25nm modules allow the user a greater capacity, Physically you can place
more GBs into a given area. However, the drawback is that 25nm has worse reading and writing latencies, compared to previous generations. However, I have yet to determine how this affects MySQL workloads.

Virident has provided the following price list:

• M1000 (1000GB Usable) – $13,000
• M1400 (1400GB Usable) – $18,200
• This amounts to $13/GB

Second, it is important to compare the performance of Virident FlashMAX MLC with available competing solutions.
It is fair to say Fusion-io ioDrive Duo 1.28TB MLC is the most well-known and most advanced competitor in the market.
I had a chance to administer a head-to-head comparison of sysbench and tpcc-mysql workloads between FlashMAX 1.4TB and ioDrive Duo 1.28TB.

It is important to highlight that Fusion-io ioDrive Duo is based on 34nm NAND technology, which is a full generation behind the 25nm NAND. However at this point, I have no access to Fusion-io ioDrive2, which is based on 25nm NAND.
Another important factor is that ioDrive Duo is actually two cards visible in the OS, and the user needs to use a software RAID. For Virident all 1400GB shows up as one single drive so no software RAID is necessary.

To compare performances I ran sysbench oltp and tpcc-mysql benchmarks. I will present the results
for sysbench oltp (with full report available later) below, and the results for tpcc-mysql in a followup post.

For sysbench, I used our multi-tables sysbench implementation with 256 tables and 10,000,000 rows each. This is a total of around 630GB of data, which allows one to adequately fill both cards in comparison.

Some hardware used in benchmarks include:

• Server: Cisco UCS C250, running Oracle Linux 6.1 and Percona Server 5.5.15
• Client: HP ProLiant DL380 G6, sysbench v5

My conclusions are as follows:

• It is great to see another player on MLC Flash cards market.
• It is also great that Virident focuses on stability of performance for competitive advantage.
• Beside stability, we also see better throughput in MySQL using the Virident FlashMAX card for every thread count. On 32-64 threads we have about a 35-40% advantage of using Virident FlashMAX.

DISCLOSURE: This review was done as part of our consulting practice for which we compensated by Virident. However, this review was written independently of Virident, and reflects our opinion of this product.

Micron RealSSD™ C300 Solid-State Drive: The Fastest Drive for Notebook and Desktop Personal Computers

REPOST from yesterday’s press release — includes YouTube link.

First to Deliver Native SATA 6 Gb/s Solid-State Drive

Boise, Idaho , Wednesday, December 02, 2009 – Micron Technology, Inc. has raised the performance bar for SSDs. The company today announced its RealSSD C300 SSD, the industry’s fastest for notebook and desktop PCs. Micron’s new RealSSD C300 drive enables users to enjoy a more powerful and responsive computing experience—including faster operating system (OS) boot and hibernate times, and speedier application load, data transfer and file copying. To see a video demonstration of the performance advantages achieved when using Micron’s RealSSD C300 drive, visit

.

“The C300 SSD not only delivers on all the inherent advantages of SSDs – improved reliability and lower power use – but also leverages a finely tuned architecture and high-speed ONFI 2.1 NAND to provide a whole new level of performance,” said Dean Klein, vice president of memory system development at Micron. While benchmark tests have shown that the C300 SSD is the fastest PC SSD leveraging the industry standard SATA 3Gb/s interface, the SSD performance is further boosted by natively supporting the next generation high-speed interface – SATA 6Gb/s.

 What Does SATA 6Gb/s Mean? It’s All in the Numbers.
Native support of SATA 6Gb/s means that the data path between the host computer and the SSD is twice as fast as the previous SATA 3Gb/s interface. While some drive architectures require a trade-off between throughput-sensitive and IOPS (Input/Output Per Second)-sensitive data streams, Micron’s core design and higher speed interface provides advantages for both. The C300 SSD leverages the SATA 6Gb/s interface to achieve a read throughput speed of up to 355MB/s and a write throughput speed of up to 215MB/s. Using the common PC Mark Vantage scoring system, the C300 SSD turns in a score of 45,000 from the HDD Suite. To see a Micron C300 SSD competitive performance benchmark video, visit www.micronblogs.com.

 “Hard drives gain little performance advantage when using SATA 6Gb/s because of mechanical limitations,” said Klein. “As a developer of leading-edge NAND technology, along with our sophisticated controller and firmware innovations, Micron is well positioned to tune our drives to take full advantage of the faster speeds achieved using the SATA 6Gb/s interface. The combination of these technology advancements has enabled the RealSSD C300 drive to far outshine the competition.”

 Designed Using Micron’s Industry-Leading 34nm NAND Flash Memory
The RealSSD C300 drive leverages Micron’s established 34nm MLC NAND flash memory, allowing the company to provide a cost-competitive, high-capacity SSD solution. Bringing another first to SSDs, Micron’s 34nm MLC NAND supports the high-speed ONFI 2.1 standard, ensuring the NAND performance keeps pace with the faster SATA 6Gb/s interface.

 The drives will be available in 1.8-inch and 2.5-inch form factors, with both drives supporting 128GB and 256GB capacities. Micron is currently sampling the C300 SSD in limited quantities and expects to enter production in the first quarter of calendar 2010.

HARDCORE FANS ONLY — SC09 Session: Flash Technology in HPC: Let the Revolution Begin

Recorded 11/20/09 at SC09, this Panel discussion entitled “Flash Technology in HPC: Let the Revolution Begin” was moderated by Bob Murphy, Sun Microsystems. Download for iPod

Abstract: With an exponential growth spurt of peak GFLOPs available to HPC system designers and users imminent, the CPU performance I/O gap will reach increasingly gaping proportions. To bridge this gap, Flash is suddenly being deployed in HPC as a revolutionary technology that delivers faster time to solution for HPC applications at significantly lower costs and lower power consumption than traditional disk based approaches. This panel, consisting of experts representing all points of the Flash technology spectrum, will examine how Flash can be deployed and the effect it will have on HPC workloads.

* Bob Murpy slides: “Flash Technology in HPC: Let the Revolution Begin“

* Paresh Pattani slides: “Intel SSD Performance on HPC Applications“

* David Flynn slides: “Fusion-io Solid State in HPC“

* Larry Mcintosh and Dale Layfield slides: “Sun’s Flash Solutions for
optimizing MSC.Software’s Simulation Products“
For more information, check out this Sun Blueprint: Sun Business Ready HPC for MD Nastran.

* Jan Silverman slides: “Spansion EcoRAM NAM Network Attached Memory“

REPOST: From magnetic to solid state, spin-free: What a long, strange storage trip it’s turning out to be

Repost from Brian Dipert’s article (EDN); You can reach Senior Technical Editor Brian Dipert at 1-916-760-0159, bdipert@edn.com, and www.bdipert.com.

Flash-memory-based solid-state drives have recently stirred up the staid storage industry, and their initial success stories foretell a potentially stellar future. Consider, for example, how rapidly they’ve taken over the formerly robust market for 1.8-in. hard-disk drives. Also consider their significant influence on smaller-form-factor hard-disk drives’ lackluster initial unveilings. A notable percentage of netbook, tablet, and other alternative mobile computers, especially those running Linux operating-system variants, contain solid-state drives instead of hard-disk drives. Thin and light conventional notebook PCs running Windows and OS X are also well along the conversion path.

For the entire article:  CLICK HERE

 

Why PCIe-based SSDs Are Important

There’s an old expression I like: “Different isn’t better, it’s just different.”

When it comes to SSDs based around a SATA or SAS format — that’s pretty much the case in my view. Yes there are exceptional products suited for enterprise like Pliant and STEC. And, yes — there are more conventional items for consumers like Intel and OCZ (and about 20 others).  And yes, the standard pacakge 3.5″ form factor for these devices make them suitable for shared storage as well as for integration into hetreogenous and homogenous storage environments like you might find in a typical data center.  Embracing these SSDs you will find the usual manufacturers like EMC, NetApp, SUN, and others.  Their use of SSD is evolutionary, easy to digest.

PCIe-based SSDs are very different.  For one thing, they sit on the server system bus right next to the CPU.  This is a direct attached (DAS) model that has numerous advantages for certain types of processing.  We agree that not all PCIe-based SSDs are suitable for all applications — but in terms of applications that can take advantage of bandwidth, throughput, and latency enhancements, these devices are indeed a superior architecture.

There are some challenges:

1)  Not all servers are created equal.  PCIe-based devices require strict adherance to the PCIe specifications at the server level.  Ping if you want to learn more about why this is critical.

2)  Many servers do not have enough PCIe slots configure appropriately for PCIe devices.  This is especially true when creating HIGH AVAILABILITY (or HA) environments.

3)  Only a very few servers have enough of the right type of slots to be meaningful from a value perspective.  It makes no sense to refresh a server for a PCIe-based SSD if you have to spend 2x or 3x to get the right slots, power, etc.

4)  Applications may not be optimized for SSD DAS.  No kidding.  OLTP or DBMS applications that can take the most advantage of SSD DAS are optimized for high latency disk access over networks such as NAS.  These applications are totally comfortable sending out 1000s or 10s of 1000s of transaction requests to build up a queue depth for the CPUs.  The net result of this is that the CPUs appear very busy but in fact aren’t doing very much.  These limitations are known and well defined.  Over time, application vendors such as SUN, Oracle, and Microsoft will implement fixes to optimize PCIe-based storage.

Aside from these items, there is a discussion regarding suitability of NAND flash devices in the data center as well as the MLC/SLC issue.  I’ll tackle those in another post.  In my veiw, MySpace and Wine.com are leading the way — and there are many others who have not come forward publicly preferring to keep the ROI and GREEN advantages all to themselves.

The latest announcements from Fusion-io, Texas Memory Systems, Micron and others point out these differences.  FULL DISCLOSURE:  I am a former employe of Fusion-io.

FORTASA: Important New SSD Vendor

Fortasa Memory Systems is a leading provider of Solid State Storage Solutions uniquely focused to meet the high-performance, high reliability needs of original equipment manufacturers (OEMs). Headquartered in Silicon Valley, California, Fortasa offers the widest product portfolio of storage solutions supporting multiple bus interfaces and form factors.