StorageSummit

Hybrid Storage Arrays
Storage experts discuss the pros & cons of hybrid storage arrays. Are they the best of both worlds?
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John Furrier
Question 1: 1)What makes a storage array hybrid vs. a traditional array?
John Furrier
What makes a storage array hybrid vs. a traditional array?
Bert Latamore
Combination of flash and spinning disk
Dave Vellante
A hybrid uses a combination of spinning disk and flash. The nuance is that hybrids are designed to be hybrids versus a legacy array that bolts-on flash
Jean-Luc Chatelain
SW that intelligently adapt data placement and movement with appliance to the workload as opposed to fixed media type LUNS deferring to the apps to make decision
cmosoares
Hybrid storage arrays offer a combination of DRAM, flash memory and HDDs, featuring a cache-centric Flash-first architecture as Wikibon defines it
Dave Vellante
The other nuance (that we feel is important) is that the best value (at scale) comes from arrays that write directly to flash versus using the flash as solely a cache
Jean-Luc Chatelain
On right Hybrid apps should not see tiers but seamless persistence space which behave a maximum capability for varied workloads
Kerstin Woods
Important to note that not all hybrids are created equal. DCIG: Making the Right Hybrid Storage Buying Decision
http://bit.ly/1rEWXe...
Dave Vellante
Writes are the Achilles heel of storage arrays - writing to a persistent medium dramatically address write bottlenecks
Dave Vellante
@dfloyer modeled this effect - this chart shows iops at scale across different levels of write intensity http://wikibon.org/w...

Kerstin Woods
Similar in concept to hybrid cars - leverage one technology for cost savings and another for performance to gain the best of both.
Dave Vellante
You can see that even at 50% writes...at scale, the hybrid (flash first array) outperforms traditional arrays with MUCH lower write intensity.
Jean-Luc Chatelain
@dvellante But attention, not all writes are equal OLTP type writes sensitive to latency but OLAP or stream ingest write are about maximum throughput
Bert Latamore
Also with flash costs dropping the cost advantage of disk is decreasing.
Dave Vellante
@InformationCTO yes absolutely. In fact the ZFS array is best in high bandwidth apps (e.g. backup) and certain lighter weight analytics apps - NOT OLTP (to UR point)
cmosoares
@dvellante Following up on Dave and others Hybrids are designed as such from the beginning and also need intelligent SW to place data in the right storage tier. With the Oracle ZS3 we load up on DRAM (2TB) and Flash (23TB read/write)
John Furrier
@InformationCTO one thing that came up at #openstacksummit is the TCO piece of this discussion
Kerstin Woods
TCO is key. Looking at ZFS Storage hybrid vs traditional arrays over 4-years the ZS3 is 266% less expensive. Wikibon: ZS3 Reads for Show and Writes for Dough: http://bit.ly/1icydb...
cmosoares
Wikibon has written a report on how hybrid arrays are poised to disrupt traditional arrays due to performance and cost advantages. See it here i. http://bit.ly/RRgZVv...
Oracle Hardware
@Wikibon: Hybrid Storage is poised to disrupt traditional disk arrays: http://bit.ly/RRgZVv...
John Furrier
Question 3: What performance and price/performance can you expect from a hybrid storage array?
Dave Vellante
I would contend in the right use cases and at scale hybrid, flash/first arrays will lower capex and opex
Dave Vellante
Here's @dfloyer view of capex opex comparison of hybrid v traditional in file-based use case http://wikibon.org/w...

Kerstin Woods
Oracle ZS3 Series hybrid has demonstrated leading performance, price/performance, and low latency in industry benchmarks with performance and price/performance advantages over EMC, NetApp, IBM, and HDS
Jean-Luc Chatelain
To the risk of sounding marketing'ish (heaven forbid) the right hybrid delivers solid state performance at HDD pricing over mixed workloads
Steven Zivanic
Oracle ZS3 delivers 17 GB/s of throughput at a lower cost than other systems: http://www.oracle.co...
ZFS Storage ZS3-4 Delivers World Record SPC-2 Performance Results - Benchmark | Oracle
ZFS Storage ZS3-4 Delivers World Record SPC-2 Performance Results
cmosoares
@dvellante Wikibon has characterized those use cases , at least as far as ZS3 goes, as high-throughput applications such as data warehousing, backup. See it here ii. http://bit.ly/1icydb...
Dave Vellante
There's an interesting discussion going on in the Wikibon community around optimizing storage infrastructure and cutting
cmosoares
Here's comparative benchmark results for ZS3.
Steven Zivanic
Oracle ZS3 delivers sub-microsecond application response times, demonstrating the capabilities of a true hybrid storage architecture: https://m.oracle.com...
New Oracle ZFS Storage Sets World Record with Fastest Response Times on SPECsfs2008 NFS Benchmark; 40 Percent Faster than NetApp
Oracle ZFS Storage ZS3-4 and ZS3-2 Storage Systems Deliver 2x Better Throughput and 3.5x Better Value than Comparable Dual-Node High-End and Mid-Range NetApp Systems
John Furrier
interested in latency sensitive apps...what fall into this category
Michael Dautle
Financial / Trading apps
John Furrier
what about streaming media?
Michael Dautle
Client side buffering generally used with media b/c you cannot always control for all the latency between storage and client.
cmosoares
ZS3 showed lower latency at 7X less cost the EMC VNX8000
cmosoares
See this video for ZS3 vs. EMC and NetApp comparisons Speed, Simplicity, Savings: Oracle ZFS Storage Appliance
http://medianetwork....
Speed. Simplicity. Savings. Oracle ZFS Storage Appliance
Your business can run faster and your IT operations can be more streamlined – with the right storage. Get the facts about Oracle’s latest generation ZFS Storage Appliance, the ZS3 Series.
John Furrier
Question 2: 2) What hybrid storage array architecture delivers the best performance?
Dave Vellante
Speaking for @dfloyer I'd say those that were specifically designed to be hybrids and not bolt ons and I would add - those that persist to the flash directly
Jean-Luc Chatelain
Again I don't think it is an architecture per se (although important) but it is the SW intelligence driving the hybrid
Dave Vellante
The storage bottleneck in many workloads is very often de-staging the cache to the backend disk - a "Flash First" architecture (RAM first then flash) signals the write is complete when the flash has it then asynchronously trickles to disk
John Furrier
I ask this question on @theCUBE all the time and the responses are consistent .. "there will never be a tool that serves 100% of the market"
Jean-Luc Chatelain
If workload is 100% IOPS and small capacity then little value to hybrid and same if 100% streaming lots of large files but these are edge cases
Dave Vellante
Remember the original EMC Symmetrix? - the beauty of the architecture was it had a HUGE cache and mega backend disk bandwidth to de-stage the cache. Blew away the performance of everything out there. That was circa 1989 - pre-flash
Bert Latamore
while speed is important it is only one advantage of flash. There is also service level consistency and handling noisy neighbors for instance.
Jean-Luc Chatelain
A well designed hybrid should serve the bell of the curve well and differentiation between vendors should be flexible affinity to different host filesystems and applications
Kevin
de-staging is a huge issue when there is a backing-store cliff like #Exadata which is limited to 32,000 HDD IOPS. Datasheet: http://www.oracle.co...
Jean-Luc Chatelain
@dvellante Yes and the big delta between '89 and today is the economics
Kerstin Woods
@InformationCTO I think it's a combination - you need the right hardware (DRAM/flash size) to be useful AND you need intelligent caching algorithms to use it most effectively.
cmosoares
@InformationCTO Yep, cache was very expensive (in fact so were spinning disks) and of course no flash technology
cmosoares
@KerstinWoods In fact with ZS3 70-90% of I/O is server from extremely fast DRAM
John Furrier
Question 5: What do ZS3 Series hybrid storage arrays bring to Oracle Database environments?
Dave Vellante
You know Oracle will tout things like Hybrid Columnar Compression as unique to Oracle storage - which it is in Oracle environments - I haven't studied these use cases in detail however
Steven Zivanic
ZS3 Storage is co-engineered with Oracle Database; it's auto tuned, data is auto tiered and auto compressed. HCC, OISP and ADO provide customers with business advantages and efficiencies.
Bert Latamore
Certainly compressiin & dedup in general r becomingmore important with flash storage & higher available compute.
cmosoares
Beyond just sheer performance, the ZS3 Series has unique advantages (Hybrid Columnar Compression, Automatic Data Optimization+HCC, Oracle Intelligent Storage Protocol) not available to third party storage systems, such as EMC and NetApp.
Kerstin Woods
Hybrid Columnar Compression is a good example – compress Oracle Database 10-50X depending on usage for 3-5X less capacity, less energy used, lower upfront costs. And, 3x-8x faster queries.
cmosoares
With HCC customers can get 10-50X Oracle Database data compression, reducing CAPEX and OPEX\
Kerstin Woods
A good summary of the unique advantages ZS3 has for Oracle DB: http://medianetwork....
Oracle ZFS Storage Appliance for Oracle Database
The industry’s first Application Engineered Storage, deeply integrated with your Oracle Database and applications to deliver maximum performance, ensure rapid creation of secondary databases, and maintain 24/7 availability.
Dave Vellante
My advice to customers is always - those things are way cool - make sure you can take advantage of them or there's no value there
Steven Zivanic
there's a material difference between storing 800TB or 100TB, across environmentals, operations and overall costs; customers can run the HCC Analyzer tool to determine how much they can save on storage for Oracle Database.
cmosoares
Advanced Data Optimization with HCC – provides policy-driven, usage-based HCC compression and automated data tiering.
Kerstin Woods
@cmosoares ADO is a great one - eliminates manual intervention to reduce the admin workload and accelerates the compression savings & performance advantage.
Kerstin Woods
Compression Advisor for HCC is available here: http://www.oracle.co...
cmosoares
Oracle Intelligent Storage Protocol (OISP) reduces 65% of manual processes involved in storage tuning for optimal performance. Database sends metadata regarding incoming data is used to tune storage.