Oncall Group

There is a revolution happening in computer hardware. Memory speed access to large volumes of data, stored on non-volatile NAND memory is becoming a reality, and it is becoming cost-effective.

The challenge is an age-old issue in processing. Storing large volumes of data then delivering it fast enough to keep up with today’s processor and memory speeds.

A modern answer lies in Solid-State Disks. These units bring massive increases in speed. But an SSD still behaves like a disk, and has connectors and housing built around it to fit into a disk bay.

Now adapters and appliances built with NAND memory can take over the role of disk, and provide memory-like speeds for large volumes of data. IO can be 10 times faster, or more, than SSDs. Without the constraints of having to behave like a disk, the appliance offers a small footprint with much lower power and cooling needs than SSD or HDDs.

We are now at the tipping point, where it is the same price or lower to build a solution with the new technologies rather than traditional disk.

The pursuit of speed in Hard-Disk Drive technology is reaching a limit. To increase performance you need to add more and more disk drives.

At the same time, NAND based units like IBM’s Flash840 are coming down in price. The price of HDDs is static. Today, if you need 100+ disks, the IBM Flash840 will compare favourably. Especially when you consider the performance delivered would need a rack or two filled with HDDs, with all the resulting power and cooling needs. A NAND appliance, 2U high in the rack can provide the same performance.

Garry Barker, now at Infrascale, used to be at IBM and is one of Australia’s most experienced Storage consultants. Garry led the successful introduction of IBM Flash Storage technology into the ANZ marketplace. I was lucky enough to catch up with Garry recently and managed to “pump” him with questions about this new technology.

Garry has some interesting comments, based on research carried out by IBM. Part of a $1 billion investment IBM has made into Flash. A key point is that once disk access is running at memory speeds, it impacts the entire ‘stack’. The balance changes and many clients have experienced a 5% to 10% increase in utilisation per processor core, after introducing Flash, indicating the ability to get more work done per core.

The benefits of Flash impact the whole performance story. It can lead to fewer cores to run the same workload. One client had a 460% increase in server utilisation! Their work was being processed 5 times as fast.

On straight acquisition, Flash is about the same cost each GB as high end HDDs for the IBM DS8000 range. Once you add in the implications for the whole workload the benefits quickly tip to Flash.

Then, of course, a new way of doing things can open. As highlighted in a recent case study by IBM, Coca-Cola Bottling Company in the US found they could change batch processing. What used to take all night could now be run 8 times a day. This dramatically improved service levels and profitability. There’s a YouTube video on the case study if you’d like to watch it:

The revolution is just beginning and is coming on strong! Just think what you could do if all your data was available at memory speed, whenever you want it!