This document summarizes a presentation on flash storage decision methodology. It discusses the speed advantages of flash storage over hard disk drives, provides examples of different flash storage use cases and architectures, and outlines important criteria for evaluating and selecting flash storage solutions, including performance, efficiency, scalability, fault tolerance, vendor strength, security, manageability, and financial considerations. It also lists some major flash storage vendors and system types.

1. #MNVMUG Debate
Flash Storage Decision Methodology
Keith Norbie
Director of Virtualization, Server, Storage - East
Keith.Norbie@tig.com
@keithnorbie

2. SATA HDD typical read IOPS = 80
Flash SSD typical read IOPS = 30,000
375x
For comparison
Typical walking speed = 3 mph
Speed of sound = 761 mph
Felix Baumgartner free-fall = 834 mph
“only” 278x
Flash is fast – but we already knew that
*Slide courtesy of Justin Lauer, Tintri

3. Interesting effect towards Moore’s Law…
What’s an architecture bound by? CPU, Network, Disk, Flash, Cache destaging, etc.

4. But…. Did you know the 2nd fastest Computer in the world has no Flash?

5. Beyond Hype: Get Informed
Get Informed
• Flash as a technology
• Differentiation
• Categories
• Efficiencies
Prepare Decision Criteria
• Financial
• Political
• Operational
• Technical
• Vendor Background

6. Flash Storage Elemental
Need to Know
•Wearing
•Inherently random access
•How is writes
•Garbage Collection
•Raid? Hot Spares?
Types of Flash
•MLC
•eMLC
•SLC
Use Cases
•Read Acceleration
•VDI
•Database
•Parts of HPC
VM Affinity
•Storage Blender
•Writes mis-alignment
•Read Cache
•VSAN
•Horizon Suite
•Guest based vs Kernel
based
Architectural
•DAS – PCIe, SSD
•Network Accelerators
•Shared – PCIe, SSD,
memory
•AFA
•Hybrid

7. Level Set on Flash
Things to know about Flash
• Cells wear out
• Different flavors
• It fails differently than disk
• Writes are expensive, reads are free
• Inherently random access
• FlashTranslation Layer (FTL)
• What is Garbage collection?
• Raid types? Hot Spares?
• Wear leveling is important

8. “Server-ization” of Storage
8
 Shareability
 High Capacity
 High Availability
 Centralized Storage Management
Capacity Tier
Performance Tier
 Data far away from Applications
 Inadequate Performance
 Poor utilization & Inefficiency
 High Costs
Performance Tier

9. DRAM PCIe
SERVER
APPLICATION DATA
Breakthrough PCIe Flash Architecture
Why Server Side is Faster
9
DRAM
HBA Switches
ENTERPRISE STORAGESTORAGE NETWORKSERVER
APPLICATION DATA
RAID
HDD/SDD
Legacy Storage Architecture
• Increased Performance
• Higher Resource Utilization
• Lower costs
• Less Complexity
• Improved Data Service
    
    


Data Delivery: MILLISECONDS
Data Delivery: MICROSECONDS

10. Anyone know of any FlashVendors?

11. Classifications and Form Factors
SDN
JBOD
Flash

12. Flash in the Storage ModelsModels defined - virtualgeek.typepad.com
Distributed, Shared NothingTightly Coupled, Scale Out
Loosely Coupled, Scale OutClustered
XtremIO
VMax
HDS USP & VSP
IBM DS
Isilon
VSAN
ScaleIO
Nutanix
Simplivity
Most Traditional
Pure
Tintri
NetApp FAS
VNX
“Object Storage”
ATMOS
Hadoop
OpenStack Swift
Coho – sort of

13. So… Kernel mode or Guest mode

14. So… Kernel mode or Guest modeSource: frankdenneman.nl & Nutanix Bible

15. Flash & Software Defined Storage?

16. Hybrid systems marry flash and disk to deliver the best of both
All Flash or Hybrid?

17. Net Results
All Flash
w/Reduce
10U
installed
(based on market-leading modular array using 300 GB 15k disks achieving a
sustained 200,000 IOPs)
280U
installed
Traditional
Storage

18. Example | Web 2.0 Infrastructure
18

19. Decision Criteria Shaping
Scalability
•Out
•Up
•Capacity
•Performanc
e
Efficiency
•Dedupe
•How
granular?
•Inline or
post?
•Thin
Provision?
Why?
Flash
Technology
• Wear leveling
past 5 years?
• Workload
Management
•How does it
handle
workloads?
• Snapshots,
Replication
• Brand of
NAND, type?
Affinity
•VMware
•App
optimization
•VDI
Fault
Tolerance
•What
happens
with a
hardware
failure
during a
write?
•Cell, drive,
node,
controller,
etc
•Caching/Tier
ing during
HA event?
Vendor
Strength
• Fiscal
• Leadership
• Momentum
• References,
Case Studies
• Use Cases
Security
•Do you
support
encryption?
Ease of
Manage-
ability
•Single pane
for PB’s?
•Software
Defined?
•Automation
Financial
•ROI/TCO?
•Justification
?

20. Questions?
Thanks!
Keith Norbie
Director of Virtualization, Server, Storage - East
Keith.Norbie@tig.com
@keithnorbie