Tuesday, December 14, 2010

Entire Databases

Databases, such as Oracle, IBM DB2, and MySQL need absolute IO performance, and solid state-only storage systems widen that net for consideration in several ways. In the past only the hot components of a database, such as redo logs, indexes, and transaction logs, were deemed worthy to place on premium solid-state devices. But this adds complexity as application software may need to be updated and administrators must decide “what data goes where”. This divided approach also makes data consistency and protection more complex because two separate storage areas need to be maintained. Since SSDs individually have little to offer in data protection, third-party, bolt-on solutions may be necessary at added expense and complexity.

Thanks to their software intelligence and cost effectiveness, sustainable storage systems have changed that. Now, the whole database can be loaded onto the system at a reasonable cost, speeding up the entire application, not just hot tables. It also means applications that are more difficult to carve up are now more viable candidates for solid state storage. Data protection is also simplified since the data is all in one location; an SSD array that has protective data services like RAID, snapshots, and replication embedded in the system. For financial services companies that rely on high IO performance, solid-state systems can offer game-changing improvements.

High Access File Systems

Though not often thought of for use with SSDs, high access file systems are also top candidates. One example of this is a Web storefront that has a catalog item which starts really selling. Another example would be a video or audio file that has become popular and is being accessed by thousands of remote users at the same time. A third example is the increased use of “thumbnail” images for websites full of such content (social networking, photo sites, search engines with preview capabilities, etc). The files in these cases become very active, along with the file systems they live on. Prior to flash-based technology, only performance work-arounds were similar to the database scenario described above: carve up the data onto separate short-stroked spindles and watch (and pray) that IO can keep up with exploding user access requests. With sustainable storage, the entire file system can reside on solid state disk, eliminating the need for manual prioritizing to ensure consistently high performance. Sustainable storage solutions like those from Nimbus Data Systems include NAS services as part of the platform. This saves the cost of buying a separate NAS device and provides centralized block and file storage on one system.

The massive file systems present in energy, genomics, multimedia and render farms demand high-performance storage. Moving from hard drives to flash can accelerate processing jobs and optimize workflows to truly give companies a competitive advantage, quicker time-to-market, and a productivity edge.

Virtualized Server and Infrastructures

Potentially no data set is growing faster than the data created by virtual server infrastructures such as VMware, Xen, and Microsoft Hyper-V, and there may be no platform better suited to sustain the high speed, low-latency requirements of virtualization than solid state storage. Server hosts in the virtual infrastructure hold and perform the consolidated workloads of potentially dozens of formally stand alone servers. When virtualized, these workloads combine to become a highly randomized, high IO-demand problem that can thrash disk drives and cause significant performance issues. While high bandwidth like 10GbE helps, mechanical drives in the SAN or NAS system do not have the ability to respond quickly enough (latency issue). This once again leads to significant time fine-tuning and managing workarounds. The storage management costs, both upfront and for ongoing operations, become the most significant part of the virtual infrastructure investment. In the end, organizations may need to scale back their virtualization plans and could fail to achieve their IT and ROI objectives if the storage system’s performance is inadequate.

Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI)

VDI potentially magnifies the storage challenge further. While the individual workloads are less demanding than the virtual server workloads, there are many more virtual desktop systems. Most vendors recommend at least 40 IOps per virtual desktop during normal work conditions. In the morning or at shift changes, many vendors suggest doubling that requirement to alleviate so-called “boot-storms”. This is all just to merely maintain similar performance levels that users were used to in their non-virtual desktop environment. To encourage users to embrace the virtual environment, IT should consider delivering better performance than what was in place prior to the migration to desktop virtualization. For example, one large storage vendor is recommending populating their SAN array with 150 to 300 hard drives to deliver the performance necessary to support enterprise-wide VDI. Since most virtual environments are not capacity challenged, these high drive count configurations go underutilized from a capacity standpoint. Implementing, maintaining, and paying for such a large infrastructure can be overwhelming, if not downright wasteful.

An SSD-based based system can deliver ample IOps to enable scalable VDI at a fraction of the data center footprint and ongoing management costs. At the same time, upfront configuration time as well as ongoing operational fine tuning is minimized. Once the virtual infrastructure is on solid state storage, there is no need to fine tune and customize for each virtual machine. The problem is solved upfront, permanently, by making storage fast enough to respond to all the virtual machines, no matter how random the IO patterns, with minimal latency and maximum constancy. More importantly, the user now sees the virtual desktop environment as a consistently speedier alternative to their former physical desktop environment, making virtual desktop adoption more attractive.

Another strong positive of using sustainable storage for the virtual infrastructure is that it can leverage some of the capacity saving measures that virtualization hypervisors provide, like ‘golden master’ images. This reduces the footprint requirements of the infrastructure and improves performance. While these capacity saving measures are valuable, the further each desktop gets away from the master original through user customization, the more likely it is that redundant data will creep in and capacity demands will rise. This is where sustainable storage systems with embedded, inline deduplication, like the Nimbus S-Class, really shine, eliminating redundant data and increasing storage utilization. Once again, thanks to the performance of solid state technology, this process can happen with minimal if any realized impact to the user experience or application performance.

Summary

Sustainable storage systems, like those from Nimbus, have the ability to move SSD implementation well beyond just a few high performing databases by making flash cost-justifiable across a wide variety of applications and workloads. It has now reached the point that if storage is being upgraded for any reason other than capacity, storage managers would do well to consider a sustainable storage system as the solution.

George Crump, Senior Analyst