Fusion-io: the application should be flash optimized.

In the past, people only knew that flash should replace hard disks, and Flash should be optimized for applications. However, with the development of the flash application, the application needs to be optimized for flash. Fusion-Io is working to drive this change.

Although storage vendors have launched a variety of FLASH products or systems, most storage vendors only use flash as a replacement for hard disks, such as replacing hard disks in disk arrays with solid state drives (SSDs, but cannot be optimized for flash. Gary Orenstein, senior vice president of fusion-io marketing, said that flash memory is not only a replacement or supplement of hard disks, but can truly take on the acceleration responsibilities of applications such as the Internet, big data, cloud computing, and database.

　Accelerate applications

Looking back, the development of storage systems has gone through three major stages of development: from general storage to storage optimized for workloads, and then to today's flash-aware accelerated storage. Gary Orenstein believes that 2014 was the first year of flash applications. An era that truly belongs to flash memory and wins quickly has arrived.

In practical applications, one important reason why many customers choose flash is that their disk arrays are too slow. Flash is widely used as a replacement for hard disks. As a professional flash manufacturer, fusion-io does not meet this requirement. Therefore, it emphasizes that its FLASH products further optimize database, virtualization, big data, and other workloads.

The latest atomic series (atomic series) Flash product released by fusion-io has pushed flash applications to a new level, accelerating flash sensing applications. Gary Orenstein gave several examples. Microsoft found that the use of fusion-io flash-aware storage can improve the performance of SQL Server by 4 times. Fusion-io also actively cooperates with the MySQL open-source community to add new features to its applications to improve performance and capacity, and improve product durability. In addition, the fusion-io all-in-one machine has recently passed sap Hana certification. It supports up to 32 sap Hana nodes, but its own chassis is only 4 U High. "Competitors can only support eight to ten sap Hana nodes with the same volume of disk arrays ." Gary Orenstein said, "In addition, our all-in-one machine maintains the highest performance record of the vmark benchmark test. Therefore, our latest atomic series will focus on application acceleration ."

Gary Orenstein believes that the atomic series products are the most outstanding products of fusion-Io. The atomic series products are not simply better than performance indicators, but can truly use their unique Flash technology to help customers accelerate their applications.

To sum up, fusion-io atomic products have made breakthroughs in performance, capacity, reliability, and efficiency. First of all, from the performance perspective, the performance of the atomic series products has greatly improved compared with the previous generation of fusion-io products. The fusion-io atomic generation uses the brand new, shorter, 20nm technology nand, but the new NAND is actually slower than the previous one. Fusion-Io is unique in that it breaks through the technical difficulties of NAND, but greatly improves the overall performance of FLASH products. Second, from a quantitative perspective, because the capacity of the new NAND device doubles, the capacity of the new NAND atomic series FLASH memory products is also doubled, A maximum capacity of TB is supported in a pcle slot, and its storage density exceeds that of the disk. From the perspective of product reliability, the new generation of NAND is more difficult to use, and fusion-io focuses on enhancing the error correction capability of the atomic flash series. The fusion-io-specific error correction technology is short for the low density mean check. Finally, from the overall energy efficiency of the product, compared with the disk, the energy consumption of flash memory is greatly reduced, which is also an important reason why users prefer flash memory. Flash memory can better reduce energy consumption, which is equivalent to saving users storage costs.

The fusion-io atomic generation is built on the latest memory-based architecture of fusion-Io. Flash applications require higher performance and less infrastructure. The atomic series products accelerate applications through innovative software. Their performance is much higher than that of general SSDS, while the required space is much less, which makes it widely used in various occasions, including databases, cloud applications, big data analysis, and even ultra-large scale workloads. Gary Orenstein concluded: "the features of the above four atomic series of flash memory products can help customers accelerate their applications, reduce their infrastructure needs, and thus reduce costs. Enterprises can use the atomic series of flash memory products regardless of their size ."

　More pragmatic

The fusion-io atomic series currently has two product lines: one is the PX series for high-performance applications and the other is the SX series for large-scale deployment. Gary Orenstein said that in fact, the boundaries between the PX series and the SX series are not so distinct. In some application scenarios, both products can be applied, so there will be overlapping situations. Fusion-io distinguishes PX series from SX series in applications to provide customers with an application reference. If customers' key applications require the ultimate performance, you can use the PX series. If you think that the performance is sufficient, and pay more attention to the economics of storage, you can choose the SX series.

Although there are many types of flash storage products and their application scenarios vary widely, they can be applied to both the server side and the storage array side, but for fusion-Io, it focuses on the use of PCIe interfaces for server-side flash memory. Gary Orenstein reiterated: "NAND should not be simply treated as a hard disk, but its essence should be restored and optimized as flash memory. From this perspective, the PCIe interface is the most suitable and gives full play to the advantages of flash memory. This is why we are able to lead the development of Flash technology and the market and achieve remarkable results in improving performance and shortening latency ." Currently, the main server vendors in the market provide pcle slots in their servers, which has played a very good role in promoting the popularization of PCIe flash memory.

The size of the SFF-8639 interface is indeed smaller, but the current market size of such products is not big enough, it is not worth the fusion-io investment to research and development. Fusion-io currently only supports pcle 2.0, but does not adopt the latest pcle 3.0. This is also because of a similar reason. Currently, the market is not highly accepting of pcle 3.0. Gary Orenstein said frankly: "as a business company, our goal is to make money, so we will focus on the technologies and products that suit the current market needs and have great commercial potential, in order to get a faster return on investment."

From a startup technology company to the leading player in the Flash market, fusion-io has become increasingly commercialized and pragmatic, and is more active and productive in market development and partner selection. On June 18, June this year, fusion-io announced that HP had become the first server OEM Partner in the atomic series. Users who have deployed HP ProLiant servers in the data center can now integrate the fusion-io atomic series products with HP ProLiant servers to accelerate applications. In addition, fusion-io announced that its ion accelerator product will enter the market as a Dell solution.

Fusion-Io was the first company to enter the PCIe flash memory market. In the absence of human beings, fusion-Io is easy to stand out and establish its unique advantages. However, just a few years later, after almost all mainstream storage vendors already have flash products, how will fusion-io continue to maintain its differentiated Competitive Advantages? Gary Orenstein responded: "We are very familiar with nand technology, so we know how to cooperate with nand vendors. In addition, we have our own controllers and have worked with many server vendors to learn how to better meet the needs of server vendors and build a stable ecosystem. For example, we are the first SAP Hana certified vendor in the flash memory field ."

　Application changes due to flash memory

In the past, people only knew that flash should replace hard disks, and Flash should be optimized for applications. However, with the development of the flash application, the application needs to be optimized for flash. Fusion-Io is working to drive this change. "Currently, only fusion-Io is doing this in the Flash field. Of course, we have to work with software partners to optimize flash memory for applications. For example, we have been working closely with the MySQL open source community and Oracle ." Gary Orenstein.

For example, in MySQL, fusion-io has developed a new function-atomic writing. Before flash memory occurs, MySQL must write data to the disk twice to prevent disk faults. However, if you perform the operation twice each time you write data to the flash memory, the life of the flash memory will be greatly affected. This problem does not exist in flash memory because the disk is written twice to ensure data consistency. Therefore, the fusion-io atomic write function developed for MySQL only writes data once for flash memory. The advantage of doing so is that, on the one hand, MySQL performance is improved, and on the other hand, flash memory life is extended. There are still many examples to optimize applications for flash memory.

"Users do not need to optimize their own applications when using fusion-io flash storage products, because fusion-io has been optimized with relevant software vendors. Of course, you can also choose fusion-io software to achieve better performance than other similar products ." Gary Orenstein said, "The entire storage industry is in the upgrading and replacement period. Now that we have flash, why do we need to use protocols and applications developed for disks 30 years ago ?"

What Should users pay attention to when selecting flash? Gary Orenstein made the following suggestions. First, the customer should know how to perform performance evaluation. Iops does not fully represent performance. The customer should evaluate the performance from the perspective of the application, not only the performance at a certain time point, but also the performance stability at a certain time point. Second, focus on power consumption. Customers need to check whether server vendors can provide SSD-Based Mature reference architectures. Third, the customer should select different types of FLASH products based on different application scenarios. Fourth, the customer also checks whether the manufacturer can provide flash memory success stories. "We are not selling FLASH products ourselves, but mobilizing the power of the entire ecosystem built around fusion-Io for sales. This is our advantage ." Gary Orenstein.

This article from the "Guo Tao's storage world" blog, please be sure to keep this source http://gtstorageworld.blog.51cto.com/908359/1535649