Making the Right Hybrid Storage Array Buying Decision
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
White Paper November 2015 FULL FEATURED NEXGEN N5 SERIES ALL-FLASH ARRAYS PUT ORGANIZATIONS ON A TRACK TO IMPLEMENT NEXT GENERATION FLASH FUNCTIONALITY TODAY By Chuck Cook, Ken Clipperton and Jerome Wendt EMPOWERING THE IT INDUSTRY WITH ACTIONABLE ANALYSIS · WWW.DCIG.COM November 2015 WHITE PAPER Full Featured NexGen N5 Series All-flash Arrays Put Organizations on a Track to Implement Next Generation Flash Functionality Today Table of Contents 1 Executive Summary 2 The Flash Storage Market Today 2 The “10X” Technologies Driving the Evolution of All-Flash Arrays 3 Amping Up the Benefits of All-Flash Arrays Going Forward 3 Sophisticated Software is the Key that Unlocks NVM’s Value 4 NexGen: Delivering the Next Generation of Value-Driven Flash Storage… Now 4 The Multi-tiering NexGen N5 PCIe All-Flash Array © 2015 DCIG, LLC. All rights reserved. i November 2015 WHITE PAPER Full Featured NexGen N5 Series All-flash Arrays Put Organizations on a Track to Implement Next Generation Flash Functionality Today Executive Enterprise data centers want to deliver economical yet consistent and responsive applica- tion performance to their end users and flash memory is now viewed as a prerequisite to Summary achieving that goal. Yet the flash picture is getting more complex. Emerging non-volatile memory (NVM) tech- nologies and new form factors are resulting in NVM devices that differ from one another in latency, IOPS, throughput, endurance, capacity and cost. While these create new oppor- tunities for both hybrid storage and all-flash arrays (AFA) to capitalize on them, many AFAs are not optimized to do so. These changes put the onus on organizations to identify the critical capabilities and features that next generation AFA storage systems should offer. AFA storage systems that deliver dynamic multi-level tiering, intelligent caching and dynamic QoS options have a marked advantage in mitigating latency spikes and providing consistent performance based on the business value of each application. Arrays that deliver these capabilities through simple constructs and familiar management interfaces provide additional competitive advantages by enabling IT generalists to rapidly deploy these systems as these features automate routine management tasks. Storage systems with these capabilities should yield a lower total cost of ownership (TCO) than systems lacking these capabilities. The NexGen N5 PCIe All-Flash Arrays exemplify how features previously associated primarily with hybrid arrays are now driving innovation and new competitive advantages in all-flash arrays. © 2015 DCIG, LLC. All rights reserved. 1 November 2015 WHITE PAPER Full Featured NexGen N5 Series All-flash Arrays Put Organizations on a Track to Implement Next Generation Flash Functionality Today The Flash Storage Market Today This leads many organizations to look to run all of their active workloads in flash because it has essentially become Hybrid storage arrays are today’s mainstream choice for “free.” That is, they see a rapid return on investment (ROI) as shared storage. Combining flash memory and HDD storage, flash accelerates all of their active workloads which, in turn, they deliver the performance, capacity and data services positively impacts their entire business. This flash-centered that organizations require at a cost that makes sense to approach to data center management can generally achieve many organizations. These features explain why 54% of hard dollar cost savings of over 30% through hardware and organizations already have a hybrid array in use with another software reductions with many organizations realizing an ROI 7% planning to deploy a hybrid array in the next 6 months.1 in less than 11 months.3 Yet the technology capturing the fancy of many organizations This explains why AFA sales are accelerating. In a recent is flash. Early all-flash arrays offered hundreds of thou- study by 451 Research, 22% of respondents have already sands and even millions of IOPS at sub-millisecond laten- implemented an all-flash array. Of those, 57% used their cies though many had limited capacity and data services AFAs to speed up multiple applications and 26% had fully accompanied by a high cost per GB. These concerns led replaced legacy arrays.4 organizations to initially use these arrays to address specific storage-related pain points for targeted high-value, perfor- mance-sensitive applications. The “10X” Technologies Driving the Evolution of All-Flash Arrays These concerns no longer hold true. In comparing the The dramatic performance improvements experienced by aggregate results from the two most recent DCIG All-flash organizations implementing flash are already leading provid- Array Buyer’s Guides, the majority of all-flash arrays provide ers to re-engineer their products to take better advantage the capacity and data services required to function as high of it. As they do so, they have identified emerging storage performance, space-efficient, direct replacements for legacy technologies poised to create the next wave of disruption. midrange arrays. These include NVM Express, 3D NAND, and 3D XPoint, each of which will create a 10x or greater improvement in STORAGE CAPACITY 2014-15 2015-16 storage performance or cost. Average Raw Flash Memory Capacity (TB) 118 445 • NVM Express (NVMe). NVM Express is a specification Median Raw Flash Memory Capacity (TB) 41 88 that unlocks the potential of PCIe SSDs by providing a standardized, highly parallel, efficient, low latency, high Maximum Raw Flash Memory Capacity (TB) 1,500 3,900 bandwidth path from CPU to NVM. Depending on the workload, each first-generation NVMe SSD can deliver ENTERPRISE DATA SERVICES 2014-15 2015-16 up to 8x the performance of SAS or SATA SSDs. NVMe Application Aware Snapshots-MS Exchange 43% 80% will be used with next-generation NVM technologies to unleash even greater storage performance. Application Aware Snapshots-MS SharePoint 33% 63% NVMe drives down the cost of integrating PCIe SSDs Application Aware Snapshots-MS SQL Server 43% 80% into systems by standardizing the driver, protocols and Continuous Asynchronous Replication 45% 53% physical interfaces. The necessary ecosystem elements are in place and poised to drive an explosion of Periodic Asynchronous Replication 63% 90% NVMe-based PCIe SSD adoption. Synchronous Replication 38% 63% Beyond NVMe devices, NVMe over Fabrics is a Source: DCIG 2 standard being developed to extend the simplicity, 1. Coulter, Marco. “Flash Storage Outlook.” Proc. of Flash Memory Summit 2015, Santa Clara, CA. Flash Memory Summit, 12 Aug. 2015. Web. 28 Aug. 2015. <http://www. flashmemorysummit.com/English/Collaterals/Proceedings/2015/20150812_ S203D_Coulter.pdf>. 2. Table statistics based on DCIG 2014-15 Flash Memory Storage Array Buyer’s Guide and 2015-16 All-Flash Array Buyer’s Guide data. Percentages represent the percentage of arrays supporting a feature. 3. Clipperton, Ken. “IBM Validates Systemic Data Center Savings Enabled by Flash Memory.” 4. Coulter, Marco. “Flash Storage Outlook.” Proc. of Flash Memory Summit 2015, Santa Clara, CA. Flash Memory Summit, 12 Aug. 2015. Web. 28 Aug. 2015. <http://www. flashmemorysummit.com/English/Collaterals/Proceedings/2015/20150812_ S203D_Coulter.pdf>. © 2015 DCIG, LLC. All rights reserved. 2 November 2015 WHITE PAPER Full Featured NexGen N5 Series All-flash Arrays Put Organizations on a Track to Implement Next Generation Flash Functionality Today efficiency and low latency of NVMe across a range of fabrics. Transports being worked on include PCIe, Fibre Channel, InfiniBand, RoCE and iWARP. Providers recently demonstrated prototypes utilizing NVMe over Fabrics and expect initial deployments in 2016. NVMe over Fabrics reduces latency and increases throughput while driving the transition to higher speed interconnections within the data center. NVMe over Fabrics also makes it possible to treat next generation AFAs more like large pools of persistent cache as AFAs may allocate NVM to workloads on demand. • 3D NAND. 3D NAND provides more than 10x the density of existing flash memory by stacking multiple layers of flash memory on a single chip. As of August 2015, Samsung is producing 48-layer 3D NAND, and has already announced a 16TB SSD based on 3D NAND while another provider has shown a prototype 64TB PCIe SSD. All major flash memory manufacturers expect to produce 3D NAND in quantity by the end of 2016. 3D NAND creates a new plasticity in capacity, perfor- mance and endurance that storage software can expose. This ultimately enables flash storage systems to storage architectures, only a couple of existing architectures adjust flash memory characteristics to match workload can effectively harness these 10x technologies and are ready requirements in the field. to immediately capitalize on them. These include: • 3D XPoint. Intel/Micron 3D XPoint is a next-generation • PCIe/NVMe Devices. AFAs that incorporate NVM technology—sometimes referred to as storage- PCIe/NVMe devices will more quickly deliver the huge class memory—that promises capacities similar to flash performance gains that NVMe provides versus those memory but with speeds and endurance that are 1000x that use traditional SAS and SATA SSDs. While these better than flash memory (just 2.5x slower than DRAM). are expected to be available by early 2016, some 3D XPoint is scheduled to ship in 2016 and can be used PCIe-based AFAs are already NVMe-ready, requiring to create some very impressive NVMe SSDs. However, only a driver update to add NVMe support. its real potential will be unleashed