SNIA Tutorial 1

A CASE FOR FLASH STORAGE –

HOW TO CHOOSE FLASH STORAGE
FOR YOUR APPLICATIONS
Dejan Kocic, NetApp

Flash Memory Storage 2018

 Welcome to
SNIA Education Afternoon
at Flash Memory Summit 2018
 Agenda

1:00 pm – 1:50 pm SNIA Tutorial 1

A Case for Flash Storage
Dejan Kocic, NetApp
1:50 pm – 2:45 pm SNIA Tutorial 2
What if Programming and Networking Had a Storage
Baby Pod?
John Kim, Mellanox Technologies
and J Metz, Cisco Systems
2:45 pm – 3:00 pm Break
3:00 pm – 3:50 pm SNIA Tutorial 3
Buffers, Queues, and Caches
John Kim, Mellanox Technologies and
J Metz, Cisco Systems
4:00 pm – 5:00 pm SNIA Tutorial 4
Birds-of-a-Feather – Persistent Memory Futures
Jeff Chang, SNIA Persistent Memory and NVDIMM
SIG Co-Chair
SNIA Tutorial Presented at SNIA Education Afternoon at Flash Memory Summit 3
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 SNIA Legal Notice

The material contained in this tutorial is copyrighted by the SNIA unless

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 Abstract

A Case for Flash Storage –

How to Choose Flash Storage
for Your Applications
Flash storage is becoming important factor for both
consumers and the enterprises.
There are many types of flash storage and it may be
challenging to determine what type of flash is right for a
specific application or a workload.
This paper will examine different types of flash and their
characteristics, suitability for different workloads, and
how end users can get the most from the specific type of
flash suitable for their needs.
.
SNIA Tutorial Presented at SNIA Education Afternoon at Flash Memory Summit
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 What is Flash Storage?
Flash storage
Uses NAND flash memory (non-volatile) technology to store data. Primary
technologies are:
SLC (single level cell)
MLC (multi (dual) level cell)
TLC (triple level cell)
3D Flash (dual or triple level cell, currently up to 128 layers) and variations on each of the technologies
(Z-SSD/Z-NAND)
Persistent memory – 3D Xpoint – dual layer currently
Differences between flash technologies:

Random read Density Endurance (PE cycles) Operating environment

SLC 25 µs 1 bit/cell 100,000+ Industrial

(e)MLC 50 µs 2 bits/cell 1,000-30,000 Commercial

TLC 100 µs 3 bits/cell 800-1,000 Consumer / Commercial

3D Flash 50 µs – 100 µs 2-3 bits/cell MLC & TLC levels Consumer / Commercial

3D Xpoint 7 µs 1 bit/cell 1,000,000+ Consumer / Commercial

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 What is Flash Storage?

Program Erase (PE) Cycles – is sequence of writing, erasing

and re-writing NAND flash. Each PE cycle is wearing out layer
of silicon oxide (gate, only about 10nm thick, does not apply
to 3D Xpoint)
SLC (e)MLC TLC 3D Xpoint
Bits/cell 1 2 3 1
PE cycles 100,000 30,000 800 - 1000 1,000,000+
Program 300 µs 900 µs 900-1400 µs N/A
time
Erase 2 ms 3 ms 4-5 ms N/A
time

Storage controller, the way data is placed in NAND flash and write amplification are
also related to wearing of flash cells. For 3D Xpoint durability, chalcogenide
material used for storage is the key factor in the case of 3D Xpoint technology.

SNIA Tutorial Presented at SNIA Education Afternoon at Flash Memory Summit

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 How Flash Storage Compares to
Other Types of Storage

Technology DRAM 3D Xpoint Flash HDD

Access time Nanoseconds 7 µs Microseconds Milliseconds

Scale 1000 1000 1000 microseconds

nanoseconds nanoseconds

Cost/GB Very high Cheaper than High Moderately High

DRAM more
expensive than
Flash
Power Low Higher than flash ~ 20% of HDDs High
consumption

Heat Low Low to moderate Low High

generation

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 Access Time Comparison

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 What Are the Use Cases for Flash?

Primary objective of flash storage is to reduce the

latency
Even with HDDs, sequential reads are relatively fast due
to prefetching and read-ahead algorithms used in RAID
and storage controllers
Sequential and random writes are always first written to
cache on storage arrays, then committed to disk
For spinning disks, random reads are a problem with no
good solution

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 What Are the Use Cases for Flash?

Random reads involve high number of seek operations

to position disk head at the specific place to be able to
read data which takes more time than any other part of
the disk read process
Random writes usually take couple of extra milliseconds
Eliminating seek operations (access latency) or reducing
them would improve random read performance
drastically

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 What Are the Use Cases for Flash?

Applications creating random reads:

Databases
Online transactional processing (OLTP)
Online analytical processing (OLAP)
Applications using databases (Data warehousing solutions,
Content Management Systems & similar apps)

Virtualization (Hypervisors & VDI solutions)

Different types of metadata
Operations involving large amounts of small
files
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 What Are the Use Cases for Flash?

Random read I/O is a common performance problem for

block- (SAN) and file- (NAS) based storage
Several different solutions are available

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 Solutions

Host attached flash (DAS or Persistent Memory)

Network caching using flash
Storage data tiering using flash
All flash storage array

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 Host Attached Flash
(DAS or Persistent Memory)

Easy to implement
Cost dependent on solution (flash or PM)
Single point of failure
Doesn’t scale very well
Limited to one host – scale out solutions exist with
specialized software
OS support needed (in the case of Persisent Memory)
If very low latency is needed, this is the best solution

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 Network Caching Using Flash

Solutions are available for IP (NAS) and FC (SAN)

networks
Solutions for IP networks can cache data or metadata or
both
Solutions for IP networks support CIFS (SMB) and NFS
protocols
In both cases, IP network and FC caching reduces load
on primary storage array
IP and FC network caching can support multiple hosts,
filers, and storage arrays
With process of flash falling steadily, this is no longer an
often used solution
SNIA Tutorial Presented at SNIA Education Afternoon at Flash Memory Summit 18
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 Storage Data Tiering

Since in most cases only 10% - 20% of allocated storage

is actively used storage, it makes sense to move rarely
used or inactive storage to lower (cheaper) tiers of
storage
Traditionally storage filers usually consist of 3 tiers:
Flash
10K rpm SAS drives and Near Line SAS or SATA drives
3D Xpoint can be used as a DRAM cache
Data tiering allows users to gain better performance with
relatively small amount of flash storage

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 All Flash Storage Array

When performance is the primary consideration, all flash

storage array is probably the best solution
Offers benefits of traditional storage arrays in terms of
robustness and built-in redundancies while being
scalable and reliable
Can provide millions of IOPS
Usually expensive in terms of cost/GB compared to
HDD, but because of technologies like deduplication and
compression price of effective storage is becoming
comparable to cost of HDD storage

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 Solutions Summary

Solutions Supports Single File Block Scalable Metadata

more than point of storage storage only
one host failure support support caching
Host attached
NO YES YES YES NO YES
flash (DAS)
Network
YES NO YES YES YES YES
caching
Storage data
YES NO NO YES YES NO
tiering
All flash
YES NO NO YES YES NO
storage array

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 Solutions Summary

Depending on the workload and use case, one solutions

may be more appropriate than the others
It is good to know your data set, performance
characteristics, application behavior, workload. . . to be
able to get the most benefit using flash storage
Know what problem you are trying to solve (e.g.,
performance on a host (application) level, network level,
or storage level. . .)

SNIA Tutorial Presented at SNIA Education Afternoon at Flash Memory Summit 22

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 Solutions Summary

In cases where timing is important and there are process

dependencies, flash storage may increase availability of
the environment, which may translate to more revenue
Being able to do more in less time may directly translate
to increased revenue (e.g., high frequency stock training)

SNIA Tutorial Presented at SNIA Education Afternoon at Flash Memory Summit 23

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 What Type of Flash to Choose

Depending on the latency needs, endurance, cost and type of

access, appropriate flash solution can be selected
Below table summarizes characteristics of different types of
flash and exact solution will depend on number of factors:
application type, data access type, data access protocol,
desired latency, scale out capabilities, availability…

Random read Density Endurance (PE Operating environment

cycles)
SLC 25 µs 1 bit/cell 100,000+ Industrial

(e)MLC 50 µs 2 bits/cell 1,000-30,000 Commercial

TLC 100 µs 3 bits/cell 800-1,000 Consumer / Commercial

3D Flash 50 µs – 100 µs 2-3 bits/cell MLC & TLC levels Consumer / Commercial

3D Xpoint 7 µs 1 bit/cell 1,000,000+ Consumer / Commercial

SNIA Tutorial Presented at SNIA Education Afternoon at Flash Memory Summit 24

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 Conclusion

Use of flash can remove bottlenecks in the environment

It can speed up existing processes and allow business to
do more in the same amount of time
Caching using flash can extend life of legacy storage
Storage data tiering can provide benefits of flash without
having to buy large amounts of flash storage
All flash arrays can provide millions of IOPS and sub-
millisecond latency in a small fraction of space as
compared to traditional disk-based storage solutions

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 Questions?
Thank you!
Visit snia.org/education

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