Today’s announcement of the E-Class storage array is an important milestone for Nimbus Data and solid-state storage in the enterprise. Until now, most solid-state storage arrays have been fairly small-scale, focused on point performance rather than enterprise-wide capacity. But the E-Class, which scales to 500 TB and sports a redundant, multi-protocol interface, is the first all-flash array to go toe to toe at the top of the market.

The State of Solid

No one would deny that solid-state storage is making a huge impact on the market. With mind-bending performance and reduced power requirements, flash memory matches up nicely with modern data center requirements. But the one missing element has always been capacity: NAND flash is more expensive than magnetic disks on a gigabyte by gigabyte basis.

Check out my 4 Horsemen series for more on the issues of disk!

The solid-state enterprise storage market started with point products targeted at specific needs within the data center. Companies like Texas Memory Systems and Violin have long supported the most challenging database applications with their external arrays, while Fusion-io, Virident, Micron and others stashed flash within the server. These companies were able to sell expensive storage into performance-hungry niches, but have found it difficult to address the capacity needs of the broader storage market.

Technology has the answer to this challenge, as demonstrated by Pure Storage, Nimbus, SolidFire, and others. Thin provisioning makes up much of the difference in cost, and deduplication or compression can even bring parity on a per-capacity cost basis. And even with these features turned on, solid-state storage arrays absolutely murder spinning disks in terms of random I/O performance.

Accumulating Nimbus

Unlike Whiptail, Pure Storage, Kaminario, SolidFire, and the rest of the startup crowd, Nimbus Data is not a new company. Founded by former TrueSAN wunderkind, Thomas Isakovich, Nimbus began as a disk storage startup before transitioning to an all-flash lineup two years ago. The company has steadily improved its product line over the years, adding NFS and SMB for a unified storage experience as well as InfiniBand for extreme performance.

Unlike most other companies in the space, Nimbus builds their own flash memory modules from raw NAND. This allows the company to avoid some of the tricky engineering required to qualify and adapt to the peculiarities of existing consumer or enterprise SSD modules. It also gives the company greater control and better flexibility to launch new capacity points when they are ready, rather than when their suppliers give the go-ahead.

Nimbus is rolling out a dual-PCB SSD module which doubles performance and capacity

The E-Class includes a new dual-PCB module which stripes data internally for better performance and capacity. This bumps each Nimbus E2000X enclosure to 20 TB, twice the capacity previously achieved, in just two rack units. And each of these enclosures draws as little as 100 W, allowing them to be stacked tall without exceeding the power capacity of typical datacenters.

E Is for Enterprise

The real innovation in the Nimbus E-Class is a brand-new “dual active” redundant controller architecture. Most previous solid-state arrays had a single controller, requiring users to mirror two entire arrays for high-availability. In contrast, most enterprise storage systems feature multiple active controllers with no single point of failure.

Read Multipath: Active/Passive, Dual Active, and Active/Active to understand what I’m on about here!

The E-Class introduces a new controller architecture for Nimbus. Each controller services all access to a LUN or volume until a failure is detected, in which case the alternate controller immediately comes online. But both controllers can have active storage at once, in what I call a “dual active” scenario. Although not truly “active/active”, the E-Class is in a different league from older single controller arrays.

Interestingly, the performance of Nimbus’ solid-state enclosures is high enough that the controllers do not need to mirror internal cache or hash tables. They simply write them out to SSD to be picked up in the event of a failure. This simplifies engineering for a dual controller system, and may lead to additional controllers added in the future.

Straightforward Pricing

Solid-state storage provides much more performance per dollar than spinning disk, but most customers still pay on a raw capacity basis. Rather than rocking the boat with alternative pricing models, Nimbus sticks to a straightforward method: $25,000 per controller, plus $100,000 per 10 TB enclosure. A minimum E-Class configuration includes two controllers and one enclosure for $150,000 with no extra cost for software licensing or features.

This seems fairly expensive for 10 TB of storage, but is actually quite competitive even with disk-based storage systems in the high-end, high-feature enterprise market. Thin provisioning increases the usable capacity of the E-Class, and the all SSD architecture means performance will not suffer. Unlike PCIe solutions, the E-Class is a shared, networked device and can be used by many servers at once.

Features and More Features

Speaking of features, Nimbus includes just about anything you could ask for in a storage array:

• In-line thin provisioning and deduplication
• Snapshots and synchronous or asynchronous replication
• 10 Gb NFS (2, 3, and 4) as well as SMB (CIFS/SMB1 and, SMB2)
• 10 Gb iSCSI
• 8 Gb Fibre Channel
• 40 Gb QDR InfiniBand

Although it has not yet been announced, Nimbus has added VMware VAAI support to the HALO operating system found in the S- and E-Class arrays. The company will support the major block storage components for vSphere 5: Block zeroing, atomic test and set, and full copy. Tom told me that Nimbus found the T10 interfaces fairly straightforward to implement but are still working on the NFS primitives. Although Nimbus does not yet have a vCenter plug-in, I expect that one is in the works.

Tom also tells me Nimbus is a “hypervisor hugger“, in that they intend to support features there rather than try to add them to the array. This is a smart choice for a smaller company, and I am glad to see Nimbus embracing the server virtualization market. I imagine an array like the E-Class would totally demolish any competing disk-based array in a virtual infrastructure deployment!

Stephen’s Stance

Nimbus has always been an interesting company, with a longer history in the storage world than most startups. Their switch to all-flash architecture was perfectly timed with the market shift, and the new E-Class comes just at the right moment. Boasting 500 TB of maximum capacity, a fully redundant “dual active” controller architecture, massive performance (even InfiniBand), and complete feature set (once VAAI is released), Nimbus may have hit on their hands.

© sfoskett for Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat, 2012. | Nimbus E-Class: The First Big, Redundant, All-Flash Enterprise Array
This post was categorized as Enterprise storage, Gestalt IT, Virtual Storage. Each of my categories has its own feed if you'd like to filter out or focus on posts like this.

The Micron P400e is a mainstream SSD for enterprise server use

Solid-state drives (SSD’s) have been around for a while, but they have never been a mainstream alternative for enterprise server booting and applications. SSD’s were positioned as high-performance storage for special use cases and were too expensive for mainstream adoption. But that might change with the latest generation of SSD’s, as exemplified by the new Micron P400e that recently landed on my front doorstep.

“Just Right” For the Mainstream

When Ford introduced the midsized Taurus automobile in 1986, many predicted that it would be a failure. The large front wheel drive car with futuristic “jellybean” styling was just too different from existing Ford models. But the car became a huge success in the United States, selling over 2,000,000 examples in that first generation in becoming the standard for American families and business people.

The magic of the Ford Taurus was its “just right” nature: it was big enough for a family but not so big they could not easily be driven; it was luxurious enough for a businessman but not overly expensive or ostentatious; it was forward-looking but approachable. From a design standpoint, the Taurus was radically different in that it was engineered by a single team inside and out and based on up-to-date yet mature technology.

The new Micron P400e SSD is a lot like the Ford Taurus: it’s roomy enough for everyone, fast yet affordable, and up-to-date if not cutting-edge. Like the Taurus, I expect major server builders to buy P400e SSD’s by the handful. In the early 1990′s, HP bought a Taurus for every mobile worker. Today, I could definitely see a company like HP equipping every server with the “just right” P400e SSD.

Solid Performance and Capacity

The Micron P400e and C300 have nearly-identical performance characteristics

The P400e combines Micron’s proven 6 Gb/s SATA SSD controller with MLC flash but adds enterprise features like hot plug support and full data path protection. Unlike earlier enterprise SSD’s, which focused on performance with expensive SLC flash chips, the P400e “makes do” with mainstream components. Micron SSD’s have a solid history of reliability (I’ve bought two myself) and the P400e enhances this with enterprise class software.

Micron sent me a P400e SSD to test, and I have been pounding on it for over a month now. Installed in my Sandy Bridge test rig, the P400e boots quickly, performs smoothly, and is much quieter than any hard disk drive (HDD). I connected it to the 6 Gb/s SATA port on my ASUS P8H67–M Pro motherboard.

For comparison purposes, I also attached and tested a Micron C300 SSD. Both Micron SSD’s were large capacity models that should perform better than smaller, cheaper versions. Although the P400e is available in 50, 100, and 200 GB sizes, Micron provided me with the 400 GB model. My C300 tester is a 256 GB example.

For testing, I used ATTO Disk Benchmark under Windows 8 Server Developer Preview, set to overlapped I/O and a queue depth of 4. Both drives performed nearly identically in this test, leveling off at between 200 and 250 MB/s with 128 kB writes and reads. This translates into over 20,000 IOPS for smaller (512 byte to 4 kB) read and write operations.

The Micron P400e SSD is a solid performer if not a speed demon

Stephen’s Stance

The time has come for an affordable enterprise grade SSD, and Micron has delivered this with the P400e. Although OEM only, this excellent SSD should find its way into end-user hands as server vendors decide to switch their mainstream offerings from spinning hard disk drives to SSD’s. With an excellent combination of performance, features, and low-cost (less than $2 per gigabyte), the P400e really is the mainstream choice.

© sfoskett for Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat, 2011. | Micron Builds a Ford Taurus: The P400e SSD Hands-On Review
This post was categorized as Enterprise storage, Everything, Virtual Storage. Each of my categories has its own feed if you'd like to filter out or focus on posts like this.

When is a gigabyte not a gigabyte? When you're not buying gigabytes!

I stepped into a hornet nest this week when I posted a write-up about a new flash storage array from Pure Storage. The controversy had nothing to do with the underlying technology, which seems quite sound. Rather, it was all about pricing, with Pure’s competitors calling foul on their price comparisons.

You’re Not Buying Gigabytes

In a world of 3 TB drives, storage capacity is almost irrelevant. Capacity is what people think they are getting when they buy enterprise storage devices, but capacity is only one aspect of the purchase, and it’s not a very significant one in most cases.

So what are enterprise storage buyers buying?

• Performance, especially I/O operations (IOPS), is much more critical than capacity in most cases, and it takes lots of spindles or expensive flash chips to deliver it.
• Data protection features like snapshots are increasingly important, and often cost extra.
• Compatibility is paramount, as is long-term supportability from all vendors involved.
• Integration and management features are often the deciding factor in purchases, especially when it comes to server virtualization applications.
• High availability and product support are “must-haves” that can multiply the cost of a solution.
• Power, cooling, and floor space can be very important for some applications and entirely inconsequential in others.
• Capacity is sometimes important, but many applications require just a few TB or less and thin provisioning, data deduplication, and compression are really blurring the lines here.

So although a typical customer will say “I need 200 GB for this application” they likely need nothing of the sort. They really need 100 IOPS, snapshots, a line on the HCL, VAAI and vCenter plugins, and redundant everything. Even the capacity number is questionable: Most applications grow over time, and few need much capacity really.

Since you can’t buy a 1 GB storage array and can’t fill a 10 TB device to 100%, pricing per GB is complete nonsense. Plain old storage space just sort of tags along for the ride once you build a system capable of meeting all these other needs.

Data Reduction or Pricing Obfuscation?

Utilization of storage capacity has always been terrible, but improving capacity efficiency is worthless. The best you can do is over-tax your array or put all your data “eggs” in too few drive “baskets”. Achieving impressive capacity utilization just concentrates I/O, and this is the last thing you want to do with spinning hard disk drives.

This is why I suggest redirecting the conversation away from capacity requirements. The amount of GB to be used and the efficiency of that storage doesn’t matter all that much except for certain massive and rare applications. Once the array is big enough to handle the data, everything else is a wash.

This is also why I’m skeptical of data reduction technologies. Most applications would be better off optimizing for performance not reducing capacity used. And data reduction techniques like compression and deduplication quickly lead down the “your mileage may vary” rat hole.

Comparing Apples to Apples

Also read Grapples and Tangelos: Why it’s Impossible to Compare Fairly

There is only one way to do a real fair comparison between different storage devices: Specify all the requirements and let each vendor put forward whatever they have that meets all of them. Who really cares if vendor A’s disk-based solution is 10% utilized while vendor B’s flash array needs 1/5 the capacity? As long as you have a place to put it (and enough power to feed it) it’ll still work fine.

One serious challenge in enterprise storage is the rise of flash memory as a storage medium. Flash chips are expensive on a data capacity basis but amazingly cheap in terms of performance and environmental efficiency. Put another way, an SSD can’t storage as much data as a hard disk, but it delivers massive I/O capability in a tiny, rugged, low-power footprint.

Since most enterprise applications need only a few hundred GB of capacity, a few SSDs can be a compelling alternative to a “refrigerator” full of disks. It can be hard to convince the boss, but you really can fit a whole datacenter’s worth of storage I/O into a few rack units!

Pure and Nimbus

This is the issue facing flashy solid state devices from many companies, and the root of my headaches this week. Pure Storage hasn’t finalized pricing yet, but are claiming that their new device costs $5 per usable gigabyte. This is incredibly cheap for an array that can blow the doors off most enterprise gear!

Nimbus Data, on the other hand, sells their all-flash enterprise storage array for about $10 per GB. But this is not the end of the story, and Pure might even be more expensive than Nimbus! Or maybe not. It all depends on what you’re comparing.

Pure claims that their cost is half the price of most comparable flash storage array competitors, but this is where the questions start to appear. Is that $5 gigabyte usable or raw? Does it include high availability? And can I really store any old gigabyte of data there or is that a compressed/deduplicated gigabyte?

It turns out that the real cost of Pure Storage capacity is $20 per GB including RAID and an extra mirrored array for high availability. But since every byte written to the array is thin provisioned, deduplicated, and compressed, many customers will pay much less for actual data stored. And since it’s an all-SSD array, it’ll perform way better than a disk-based system, too.

Muddying the Waters

So why not just call it $5 per GB and be done with it? It’s confusing, that’s why, and your mileage will vary widely.  Pure’s own slides show some applications getting 4:1 data reduction and others all the way up to 17:1. So these applications would be paying as low as $1.18 per GB or as high as $5.

But you can’t buy just 1 GB of storage from Pure. Their smallest array (which includes one controller and one shelf of SSDs) provides 5.5 TB of raw capacity, presumably using 24 256 GB SSDs. A high-availability configuration would include two controllers and two shelves of SSDs for 11 TB of raw storage. That’s going to cost almost a quarter of a million dollars according to my calculator. That’s one expensive gigabyte!

Of course no one would buy this array to store just a thousand megabytes. They would buy it to support a bunch of applications that need capacity and performance and efficiency and integration and everything else. And they can buy a mirrored pair of arrays from Pure Storage or Nimbus or Violin Memory or Texas Memory Systems or others at a variety of price points.

The only way to really compare these products is to spec them out on equal footing and see what the price tag looks like. These comparisons would include data reduction, but they would also have to bring in high availability and every other requirement of the applications they will support.

Stephen’s Stance

It’s way too difficult for me to do the pricing math for these systems, so I’m throwing in the towel. I’m thrilled to see all-flash arrays made available to IT buyers. This wouldn’t be possible without clever use of thin provisioning and data reduction, as well as smart software to overcome the limits of SSD.

I’m going to guess that Pure and Nimbus will cost about the same for similar configurations, though I’ll bet each believes they’re cheaper. Rather than get in the middle, I invite each company to post a comment below stating their case. I’ll even embed their responses into a future blog post on the subject if they get too long. Just don’t ask me to be the referee.

Update: Pure Storage responds with an outline of their pricing:

• How Pure Storage Delivers All-Flash Storage at Below the Price of Spinning Disk

Image credit: Rotten Apple by Wappas

© sfoskett for Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat, 2011. | When Pricing Gets Squishy Competition Heats Up
This post was categorized as Enterprise storage, Personal, Virtual Storage. Each of my categories has its own feed if you'd like to filter out or focus on posts like this.

Iomega updated the 12-drive rack mount StorCenter device, introducing the px12-350r today

Iomega surprised exactly no one by announcing an updated 12-drive rack mount storage array today. Featuring “Cloud Edition” software introduced earlier this year, the px12-350r also sports mildly updated hardware specs, though still relies on Intel’s “Core2 Duo” CPUs and Gigabit Ethernet. The new device slots in between the desktop px4/px6 line and parent EMC’s new VNXe storage devices.

What’s In A Name?

According to Iomega’s established naming standard, the px12-350r uses the new “Cloud Edition” OS (“px”), features 12 drives, ought to perform better (“350″) than the existing “300″ devices, and is rack-mountable. Comparing it to the previous-generation ix12-300r reveals what Iomega changed and what they didn’t.

What’s new compared with the ix12-300r:

• Iomega stepped up from 5900 rpm “green” drives to faster 7200 rpm disks for more rotational IOPS
• 3 TB drives are now available, for a maximum of 36 TB raw storage, though many customers will likely choose less-expensive 2 TB drives instead
• Solid-state drives (SSD) are now available as an option like the desktop px line, though Iomega doesn’t get automatic sub-LUN tiered storage like EMC’s VNXe line
• The “Cloud Edition” OS includes Iomega’s nifty “personal cloud” replication features, allowing data to be moved to other Iomega px devices
• This new OS also supports SCSI3 persistent reservations, required to support many clustered server operating systems
• Iomega finally rolled out the Avamar deduplicating backup client I spotted last year at EMC World a few months ago, and it will be a featured component of the px12-350r
• On the hardware side, Iomega doubled the system memory to 4 GB, so it should handle more users than the previous device
• The px12-350r still uses Intel’s older Core2 Duo CPU range, though it’s not clear if this is the same 3 GHz E8400 chip
• The ix12-350r still features quad Gigabit Ethernet ports, not 10 Gigabit Ethernet like some competing products from companies like D-Link, HP, Overland, and Winchester

Impressions of the px12-350r

The software is all-new, but the px12 still relies on a Core2 Duo CPU and Gigabit Ethernet

Overall, I’m pleased but not overly amazed by Iomega’s new top-of-the-line device. This is partly due to the fact that I knew what was coming: This product was telegraphed by the px4-300r introduced previously. In fact, the shipping px12-350r doesn’t even offer the enhancements I expected: I suggested it would include Sandy Bridge CPUs and hoped for 10 Gigabit Ethernet.

I still expect a transition to next-generation Core CPUs in the coming year, and boxes like this will likely use that extra horsepower to run additional applications. I’m dreaming of a Sandy Bridge Xeon box with an integrated copy of VMware ESXi and 10 Gb Ethernet – such a device would be awesome for remote offices or small businesses!

Iomega’s “personal cloud” technology is perhaps improperly named for this product. It allows a small or mid-sized business to replicate and protect data to another Iomega px-series device without any monthly fees. The device can also back up to Mozy or Amazon S3, and the integrated Avamar client will be appreciated by larger customers.

This product, like the desktops and the previous-generation ix12-300r, includes PCI Express slots. I had hoped these might be populated with optional 10 Gigabit Ethernet cards (as many competitors offer) but these haven’t turned up yet. Iomega suggests smaller IT groups are still holding off on 10 GbE, perhaps waiting for 10GBASE-T. But 10 GbE pricing is dropping rapidly, and I’m seeing much interest from end users. I strongly suggest Iomega roll out this connectivity option in short order!

It’s interesting that VMware chose to develop their own software for the vSphere Storage Appliance (VSA) in vSphere 5 rather than use this Iomega/EMC LifeLine OS. LifeLine is possible as a VM: It will be available in the lab at VMworld! But this is not available for production.

Stephen’s Stance

Despite a lack of surprises, the px12-350r is still a solid SMB or remote office product. Retail price is $6k-$10k, slotting in below the EMC VNXe3100, and the device’s features reflect this product stratification as well. The consumer-sounding “personal cloud” data replication is actually much more useful in a small-business environment, and I suspect Iomega resellers will be pushing this (as long as they don’t sell some other replication option).

I expect further product updates from Iomega in the coming year, including a switch to Sandy Bridge (second-generation Intel Core) CPUs and the availability of 10 GbE. I’d also like to see the LifeLine software (and Iomega’s recommendations) abandon RAID5 in favor of some wide-striping “post-RAID” for performance and reliability. And integrated automated storage tiering would be great, though this would really show up the “big brother” VNXe line. Hey, a guy can dream right?

© sfoskett for Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat, 2011. | Iomega Introduces the StorCenter px12-350r
This post was categorized as Enterprise storage, Everything, Virtual Storage. Each of my categories has its own feed if you'd like to filter out or focus on posts like this.

Startup Pure Storage launches today with an all-flash array for the same price as disk

Flash memory is awesome, but SSD isn’t a drop-in replacement for disk. Flash is totally different from spinning disk, yet most storage arrays still treat it as disk-like block storage. That’s why I was pleased to hear from startup Pure Storage, who are asking the core question, “what should an all-flash storage device look like?”

Another Storage Startup?

Pure Storage is a storage startup led by veterans of Veritas, NetApp, Sun, and Apple. The company has raised $55 million from key investors, including flash giant, Samsung.

Pure is working on what they call “the first all-flash enterprise array”, a slogan that will certainly draw the daggers of Nimbus Data, which has been selling an all-flash enterprise array for over a year. Like the Numbus S-Class, the Pure array relies on inline data reduction and compression to optimize the cost of storage, bringing flash capacity within reach of enterprise customers.

The Pure Storage FlashArray FA-300 array features active/active controllers with 12 CPU cores. These controllers attach to 24-bay drive shelves full of 2.5″ SSDs, and multiple units are clustered with 40 Gb InfiniBand. Pure Storage boasts that this combination allows 300,000 read and 180,000 write IOPS with less than one millisecond of latency. These are impressive performance numbers, but that’s not really the focus of the company.

Most beta customers use Pure Storage for a combination of performance and capacity. They are pleased to not have to worry about storage performance, but are also interested in reducing floor space and power demands of many-spindle storage arrays.

The smallest Pure Storage array (which includes one controller and one shelf of SSDs) provides 5.5 TB of raw capacity, presumably using 24 256 GB SSDs. A high-availability configuration would include two controllers and two shelves of SSDs for 11 TB of raw storage.

You should also read my follow-up piece on Pure’s pricing, When Pricing Gets Squishy Competition Heats Up

Optimized I/O

Pure also relies on MLC flash, a technical choice that will likely be the target of competitors. But the company insists they can overcome the limitations of inexpensive MLC flash (slower writes, reduced longevity) through intelligent software optimized for just this storage medium.

All I/O is thin provisioned and zero-detected, de-duplicated, and compressed in-line before it hits the SSDs. Since flash excels at random reads, data de-duplication does not have the performance impact most folks assume. In fact, de-duplicating data actually improves performance since less writing is required. Pure Storage uses a 512 B chunk rather than the larger chunks used by competitors, and they claim this gives a capacity advantage.

Pure’s array was designed from the ground up around flash, with minuscule latency and no tiering to spinning disk. The Pure Storage array does not use raw NAND flash but still relies on SSD (likely 470-series SATA drives sourced from partner Samsung). The Pure Storage “Purity” software optimizes I/O for these SSDs rather than relying on the in-drive software. They “cook” the data to the optimum chunk size, so the drive never needs to re-arrange I/O internally and performance does not diminish over time. Another optimization is I/O scheduling so drives are never written to and read from at the same time. Pure Storage also moves data over time for wear leveling, though it’s not clear how this interacts with the similar functionality already present in the SSDs.

Since flash memory has unique failure patterns, Pure Storage designed their own “RAID 3D” system to protect data. SSD drives sometimes fail entirely, but unrecoverable read errors (URE) are much more common. And as NAND flash ages (and device generations get finer geometry), error rate increases. Data is collected into a segment before writing, and each segment is written to all available drives. If a drive fails, data is re-protected in the background with at least dual parity. Since flash is so fast, rebuilding parity is much quicker than spinning disk-based systems. This wide striping also makes performance more consistent as drives fail and the system fills.

The Pure Storage Use Case

Pure Storage’s pricing is based on a 5:1 capacity reduction target, though the company claims that they often beat this in production, especially for VMware environments. Real-world data reduction cited by Pure Storage ranges from 4:1 for an Oracle environment to 17:1 for VMware.

The Pure Storage array is in its final beta round and the company expects to ship GA product by the end of the year. Key use cases are VMware and database environments – two high-I/O applications that have traditionally benefitted from flash storage.

Stephen’s Stance

It’s great to see fresh thinking in storage, and Pure Storage comes out of the gate with some impressive credentials: A top-tier team, excellent technical capabilities, and reasonable pricing. But it takes more than a great product to succeed in storage, and building awareness and sales are the next challenge for the company.

© sfoskett for Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat, 2011. | Pure Storage All-Flash Storage Array Revealed
This post was categorized as Enterprise storage, Virtual Storage. Each of my categories has its own feed if you'd like to filter out or focus on posts like this.

OWC sent me the DataDoubler (purple), so my MacBook Pro now has "paired storage": A hard disk drive and an SSD

Datacenter servers commonly store data on shared networked storage arrays, but the laptops and desktops used by individuals continue to rely on internal hard disk drives. Enterprise arrays employ a number of performance enhancements, including large RAM caches and fast flash storage, but end users are stuck with single disks. This is changing, however, as users increasingly deploy flash SSD for performance while retaining a hard disk as well for capacity. This is “paired storage”, and it’s a major trend.

Tiering and Pairing Storage

Tiered storage is commonly used in the enterprise server space. Storage pros deploy a few different categories of storage and assign them to servers as needed: Slower RAID-5 for capacity and faster 15k rpm mirrors or flash SSD for performance. Some systems now have the ability to actively move data on the fly between according to demand, often on a block-by-block basis.

Tiered storage makes sense in the enterprise because storage arrays are shared by multiple servers. But it was impractical to deploy multiple storage types in a desktop, and often impossible in a laptop. The typical client machine still has a single hard disk drive, often chosen for capacity rather than performance.

Avid gamers challenged the status quo, however, by deploying faster hard drives, multiple drive types, and even RAID storage. Drives like the 15k rpm Western Digital VelociRaptor and OCZ Vertex SSDs took this enthusiast market by storm, and the excitement about the massive performance offered by these devices is spilling over into other markets.

Today, high-end laptop and desktop buyers are rapidly adopting dual-drive strategies, pairing an SSD for booting and applications with a hard disk drive for capacity. PC makers are responding, offering built-to-order paired storage configurations in high-end machines like the Apple iMac.

Leave The Optical Drive At Home

A common aftermarket paired storage configuration replaces the optical drive with a hard disk drive (HDD) using a specialized bracket. This is especially common in the Apple world, with MacBook Pro users snapping up the MCE OptiBay and OWC DataDoubler and moving their DVD SuperDrives to external enclosures.

One reason for this shift is the lagging capacity of optical media. Today’s hard disk drives have up to 100 times the capacity of a DVD, and “ripped” media files are even more compact. A 1 TB hard disk drive can hold over a thousand hours of high-definition video and can serve double duty storing virtual machine disks, music, and other space hogs as well.

Another reason to skip the DVD drive is a shift in the distribution of software from optical disc to online download. Apple has rapidly moved to Internet-based distribution with their Mac App Store, and independent publishers commonly rely on digital downloads rather than box-and-disc distribution. Many users simply no longer need an optical drive.

Fitting an SSD in place of a DVD or Blu-Ray drive is something of a challenge, however. The Slim SATA connectors used by optical drives is mechanically incompatible with laptop hard disks (microSATA), as is the drive bay mounting screw locations.

Data Placement Difficulties

But mainstream operating systems like Microsoft Windows 7 and Apple Mac OS X are not inherently suited for paired storage. No desktop operating is able to make optimal use of an SSD and hard drive by dynamically placing data according to performance demands or frequency of access. They will not even combine the SSD and HDD into a single logical drive.

Instead, users must manually configure their storage, often placing most of their data on the SSD and moving data to the hard disk by hand. This wastes valuable flash capacity and limits the effectiveness of a paired storage configuration. But users are willing to sacrifice some price efficiency for the performance they get from the SSD.

Stephen’s Stance

Paired storage is a growing trend in the laptop computer market, with many high-end machines sporting both a SSD and hard disk drive. But it remains a game for the rich, adding many hundreds of dollars to the cost of a computer, and manually placing data is inefficient. It will be interesting to see if future operating systems bring better support for paired storage, and if it will reach into the server world.

© sfoskett for Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat, 2011. | What Is Paired Storage?
This post was categorized as Apple, Enterprise storage, Personal, Terabyte home, Virtual Storage. Each of my categories has its own feed if you'd like to filter out or focus on posts like this.

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© sfoskett for Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat, 2011. | Back From the Pile: Interesting Links, July 8, 2011
This post was categorized as Everything. Each of my categories has its own feed if you'd like to filter out or focus on posts like this.

Is Apple already abandoning the "blade" SSD in the MacBook Air?

Apple is once again on the cutting edge of PC design, reportedly ditching traditional storage controllers and turning to motherboard mounted flash storage for the new MacBook Air. Although most discussion so far has focused on the merits of this particular solution, the repercussions of such a move go far beyond Apple’s sub notebook and point to a new era when SCSI and ATA interfaces no longer dominate.

What Apple May Do

We will not know for sure until reviewers get their hands on the expected MacBook Air refresh later this month, but rumors suggest that Apple will do away with the SATA controller when they moved to Intel’s Sandy Bridge CPU architecture.

Readers of this blog may recall that Apple previously switched to an all SSD storage lineup in the last MacBook Air refresh. This system used “blade” SSDs, but these include a traditional SATA controller and interface to the motherboard which is a substantial performance bottleneck. Reviews show that the MacBook Air, while quick, does not reach the level of I/O performance theoretically possible from flash memory.

If Apple integrates the flash controller and NAND modules directly onto the motherboard (and logically attached to the PCI express bus), performance will improve dramatically. Users of enterprise PCIe SSDs have already seen the incredible performance that these solutions are capable of. It is not exaggeration to say that a PCIe SSD is as much of an upgrade over a SATA or SAS SSD as they are over a traditional rotational hard disk drive.

Industry Implications

Moving from an SATA SSD to a true integrated storage design is not a trivial task. Flash memory controllers are still required to manage the unique characteristics of the chips involved, and the operating system drivers must be modified to address memory directly or through these new controllers.

Apple is ideally suited to making this shift, since they control both hardware and software design. It would be much more difficult for HP, IBM, or Dell to make this move, since they would need to coordinate with Microsoft to produce a successful product. Conversely, Microsoft would be hard-pressed to demand that their hardware OEMs make such a change since it would require extensive engineering and testing on their part.

If Apple does indeed abandon a traditional SATA interface for storage on the MacBook Air, they may consider doing the same across their entire product portfolio. The iOS devices (the iPhone, iPod, iPad, and Apple TV) have already made this shift, another engineering advantage for Apple. One imagines a next-generation line of MacBook Pro and iMac computers with lightning fast SSD in addition to traditional SATA optical and hard disk drives.

These new computers from Apple will perform so much better than similarly specified Windows PCs that the entire industry will be forced to make a similar shift. But Apple already holds a dominant position in the NAND flash memory industry thanks to the purchasing might that comes from iOS. This puts every other computer maker at a disadvantage both financially and in terms of order fulfillment.

Stephen’s Stance

As techies moan about the lack of upgrade options presented by a soldered in SSD, they miss the bigger industry picture. For too long, computers have been held back by traditional SCSI and ATA controllers. These are both a performance bottleneck and an impediment to innovation. A shift to an integrated PCI storage model makes much sense tactically and strategically for Apple, and I expect that these rumors are true. Furthermore, this move will put even more stress on Windows PC makers. Once again, Apple is outmaneuvering the competition.

© sfoskett for Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat, 2011. | Implications of the 2011 MacBook Air’s Unconventional SSD
This post was categorized as Apple, Terabyte home. Each of my categories has its own feed if you'd like to filter out or focus on posts like this.

Many enterprise SSD makers are familiar to storage folks like myself, including Hitachi Global Storage Technologies, Imation, Intel, Samsung, Seagate, and Toshiba. Readers of my blog may also recognize Fusion-io, LSI, Micron, OCZ Technology, Texas Memory Systems, and Viridant from my recent coverage, and may have heard of Solid Access Systems, Anobit, Pliant (now part of SanDisk), and others. But some names remain unfamiliar, at least for now. And others, notably Nimbus Data and Violin Memory, are puzzlingly missing from the StorageNewsletter list.

So here’s my rundown of the enterprise SSD makers to keep an eye on in the coming year!

For fun, I am grouping these by how much contact I had with them over the previous year. Although obviously not the most scientific measure of their impact on the storage world, perhaps this will help highlight those that are reaching out to independent bloggers like myself.

Well-Known SSD Players

See also Micron Bursts Into the PCIe SSD Market

First up is a group of companies that I’m quite familiar with, having recently been briefed on their SSD plans and products.

1. LSI
2. Micron
3. Nimbus Data
4. Texas Memory Systems

Next is a list of companies that, although I have contacts of one sort or another, I eagerly anticipate future briefings regarding SSD technology.

1. Anobit
2. Intel
3. Fusion-io
4. Hitachi GST
5. Seagate Technology
6. Stec
7. Violin Memory

SSD Contenders

See also Toshiba Offers “Blade” SSDs (Like Apple’s MacBook Air)

I have spotted the following companies at conferences, in industry publications, and on the web and feel that I am somewhat familiar with their SSD plans. But I welcome any opportunity to get to know them better, and encourage them to contact me via e-mail or by telephone.

1. OCZ Technology
2. Imation
3. Samsung
4. SanDisk / Pliant Technology
5. Solid Access
6. Toshiba
7. Viking Modular Solutions
8. Virident Systems

Who?!?

I was surprised to see this set of companies listed in the StorageNewsletter article, and more surprised when I went to their website and found that they were working on genuine and interesting enterprise SSD products. I would love to get in contact with folks at these companies so I can learn more about what they are up to!

1. BiTMICRO Networks
2. Foremay
3. Macrotron Systems
4. pureSilicon
5. RunCore
6. Smart Modular Technologies
7. Super Talent

Stephen’s Stance

In all, I located 25 companies that build solid-state storage devices for the enterprise market. My quick examination of their websites (or previous knowledge of the companies) reveals a wonderful and vibrant culture of innovation around solid-state storage technology. Watch this space over the next year, since I intend to cover the SSD space in detail!

I would like to thank Jean-Jacques Maleval for spurring my research into these enterprise SSD companies. He is really doing a great job over at StorageNewsletter, and I recommend that you subscribe!

© sfoskett for Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat, 2011. | My Incomplete, Subjective List of Enterprise SSD Companies
This post was categorized as Enterprise storage, Personal, Virtual Storage. Each of my categories has its own feed if you'd like to filter out or focus on posts like this.

The Micron RealSSD P320h is more than a new form-factor for the company; it also introduces their RAIN technology

This morning, Micron announced their “RealSSD” P320h SSD, bringing them into the PCIe storage market for the first time. Already a leading supplier of both consumer and enterprise SATA SSDs, as well as the world’s leading supplier of NAND flash in partnership with Intel, this move puts Micron in direct competition with existing suppliers like media darling Fusion IO.

Introducing the RealSSD P320h

The RealSSD P320h SSD can be seen as a PCIe companion to the existing P300 series of enterprise SSDs, but it is much more than that. Micron brands their entire SSD line “RealSSD”, from the consumer grade C300 and C400 (which Crucial sells as the M4) to the enterprise P300. All include Micron’s own SSD controller ASICs and flash memory modules, offering greater levels of integration and profitability for the company.

The P320h seems similar to the recently introduced P300 in terms of componentry, but the PCIe interface puts it into a different realm of performance. Although Micron’s RealSSD line is lauded for its 6 Gb SATA interface, an internal PCI express card like that P320h blows the doors off any disk interface. Micron’s presentations show the P320h delivering over many times the IOPS of their already speedy P300! As demonstrated already by numerous competitors, there is no substitute to the low latency I/O performance of a PCIe card.

The RealSSD P320h will initially be offered in two models, both in the full-height half-length PCIe form factor. The 350 GB model offers slightly lower random write performance than its 700 GB big brother, but both boast massive performance numbers. Both use 34 nm SLC flash chips and are built on a 32-channel design.

Massive Performance

The P320h delivers astonishing performance, at least in Micron’s PowerPoint illustrations. My own C300 can push 250 MB per second of sequential writes, and the enterprise class P300 is maybe a bit faster. But the P320h is rated at 2 GB per second sustained sequential write performance, nearly an order of magnitude faster. It would be difficult find an application, let alone a server, that could sustain this kind of throughput for long.

Micron boasts industry-beating throughput

Even more important than throughput is I/O performance. SSDs like my C300 excel at servicing I/O requests, and are rated at 30,000 to 45,000 random 4K write IOPS. Again, the P300 is able to match this level of performance while providing five-year reliability for enterprise applications. But the P320h delivers nearly 350,000 4K write IOPS, besting the fastest and most expensive enterprise storage arrays in existence.

Micron's IOPS claims are astonishing

Note that all numbers in these charts are from the manufacturers’ own specification sheets: Micron P320h, Fusion I/O ioDRIVE DUO, TMS RamSan-70, LSI WarpDrive SLP-300, OCZ Z-Drive R2 e88, Virident tachIOn. I have included two of Micron’s RealSSD SATA drives for comparison purposes: Micron P300, Micron/Crucial C300.

Benchmarks should always be taken with a grain of salt, and manufacturer spec-sheet claims are doubly dubious. But Micron makes these claims, and it won’t be long before these devices are independently benchmarked.

Digging Deeper Into the Hardware: RAIN Reliability

The P320h is a first for Micron in a number of ways. Along with being their first PCIe card, it also is the first SSD to feature Micron’s so-called RAIN architecture and RealSSD Manager software. The P320h includes optimized drivers for Windows and Linux to further improve performance, but Micron is leaving it to partners to integrate the SSD with operating systems, hypervisors, or applications.

RAIN is Micron’s answer to concerns about SSD reliability in the enterprise. Although already using ultra-reliable SLC chips, the P320h introduces a raid like technology Micron calls Redundant Array of Independent NAND, or RAIN for short. Reminiscent of SandForce’s Redundant Array of Independent Silicon Elements (RAISE), RAIN arranges flash memory chips in a 7+1 arrangement to improve reliability and recoverability in the event of a failure.

Micron claims that this combination of intelligent controllers, RAIN, and SLC memory chips delivers top-notch reliability. The company measures reliability in terms of the number of full drive fills that can be sustained per day for five years. They claim that enterprise customers demand SSDs that can sustain 30 fills per day for five years, or an incredible 54,750 drive fills. That’s 25 PB of data written for 350 gig unit or 50 PB for the big 750 GB P320h!

Putting things another way, if the 700 GB P320h was pounded with sequential data at its rated maximum of 2 GB per second, it would take over nine months to wear out this drive. Just in case the customer expects to hammer on the drive constantly, they may use the RealSSD Manager software to throttle performance and ensure reliability to a given date.

Stephen’s Stance

PCIe SSDs like Micron’s new P320h offer mindbending performance and enterprise class reliability. Although expensive, these devices are in an entirely different league from any other storage option. Micron promises to bring the PCIe P320h to market at nearly $15 per gigabyte, a substantial discount over other PCIe SSD competitors. But the card will still cost more than $5000, making it an expensive add-on for most servers.

The challenge in enterprise storage is not delivering absolute capacity or performance any longer. Today’s challenge is making that capacity and performance available to applications and, ultimately, and users in the form of improved satisfaction or profitability. Micron is moving the ball forward on the hardware front, but my focus remains on software providers that will deliver this performance in a usable form for applications, hypervisors, and operating systems.

And what’s next from Micron? I expect a SAS HDD-form factor SSD shortly, and perhaps a line of PCI Express Mini Cards or “Blade” SSDs might follow.

© sfoskett for Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat, 2011. | Micron Bursts Into the PCIe SSD Market
This post was categorized as Enterprise storage, Gestalt IT, Virtual Storage. Each of my categories has its own feed if you'd like to filter out or focus on posts like this.