November 1, 2010 -- There was a sizable uptick last month in the readership of a blog entry that appeared nearly two years ago on DCIG's website on the topic of data loss on SATA storage systems. While this blog entry received a fair amount of interest when it was first published, exactly what prompted a resurgence of interest in this topic last month is unclear.
Maybe it's just an anomaly driven by the whimsical interests of Internet users who are for whatever reason searching on this topic.
However, it may be a more ominous indication that SATA disk drives are wearing out and that the traditional RAID technologies used to protect them are failing. As a result, users are looking for information as to why RAID, in some circumstances, is not doing the job in their environments.
The death of RAID (or at least RAID 5) has previously been forecast by some analysts. But even now, when I look at the features of new storage arrays, the number of RAID options that they support is always prominently mentioned.
A good example is Overland Storage's recent introduction of the SnapSAN S1000. It offers at least 10 different ways that RAID can be configured (including RAID 5) on a storage array that starts at less than $10,000, so it's clear that RAID is not dead or even on its last legs.
But there is no disputing that capacities of SATA disk drives will cross the 4TB, 8TB, 16TB and 32TB thresholds over the next decade. As that occurs, it becomes questionable whether current RAID technologies will be able to protect disk drives of these sizes. If the increased interest in DCIG's 2008 blog entry (see "Data Loss on SATA-based Storage Systems -- Coming Soon to Your Company?") is any indication, the answer would apprear to be 'no.'
Am I predicting the death of RAID? Clearly not. RAID technology is as much a part of the storage landscape as tape, and odds are that innovation will continue to occur in RAID to make it a relevant technology for the foreseeable future.
Yet it was clear from speaking to a few users and storage providers at Storage Networking World (SNW) last month that new approaches to protecting data stored on larger capacity SATA disk drives are going to be needed.
One specific company that I met with at SNW was Amplidata, which is already innovating in this space to overcome two of the better known limitations of RAID, including:
•The increasing length of time required to rebuild larger capacity drives. Rebuild times for 2TB drives are already known to take four hours or longer to complete, and in some cases -- depending on how busy the storage system is -- it can take days for a rebuild.
•The need to keep all disks in a RAID group spinning so no power savings can be realized. Spin down is likely to become more important in the years to come as more data is archived to disk, with it likely becoming a function of the storage array to intelligently manage and place the archived data on these drives -- as opposed to the software -- to facilitate the spin down of drives.
Amplidata's AmpliStor distributes and stores data redundantly across a large number of disks. The algorithm that AmpliStor uses first puts the data into an object and then stores the data across multiple disks in the AmpliStor system. By storing the data as an object, Amplidata can reconstruct the original data from any of the disks on which the data within the object resides.
This technique eliminates growing concerns about the rebuild times associated with large disk drives since the original data can be retrieved and reconstructed even if one, two or even more disks fail. Also, should disk drives in the system be spun down to save energy, they do not need to be spun up to retrieve needed data since the data can be retrieved and reconstructed from other spinning disks in the system.
While it is unlikely that AmpliStor or its underlying technology will be widely adopted in the next few years, the simple fact is that increasing capacities of disk drives will eventually make technologies such as AmpliStor a prerequisite in almost any high-capacity enterprise storage system.
So in the same way that enterprise storage vendors started to adopt RAID 6 about five years ago to prevent the loss of data should two SATA drives fail, look for some variation of Amplidata's AmpliStor to find its way into enterprise storage systems over the next decade to prevent the loss of data on these ever larger disk drives. At the same time, expect RAID to find a new home on smaller storage arrays where the level of protection and speed of recovery that RAID currently provides is more than adequate.
This post originally appeared on the DCIG site (see "RAID is Certainly not Dead But its Future Looks Small").
Showing posts with label RAID. Show all posts
Showing posts with label RAID. Show all posts
Monday, November 1, 2010
Monday, August 2, 2010
What’s so cool about Intel’s Jasper Forest?
August 2, 2010 – Intel recently began production shipments of its C5500/C3500 series processors, formerly code-named Jasper Forest. The chips, which are based on the Nehalem architecture and are part of the Xeon line of CPUs, are optimized for embedded storage and communications systems.
David Tuhy, general manager in Intel’s Storage Group, says there are four key features that storage vendors and end users will benefit from: a built-in RAID accelerator, asynchronous DRAM self-refresh technology, PCIe non-transparent bridging, and increased bandwidth.
The C5500/C3500 includes an integrated accelerator (internally dubbed Crystal Beach) that offloads RAID-5 and RAID-6 processing and eliminates the need for a custom ASIC for RAID-5/6 operations. In addition to increasing performance, the RAID offload functionality saves energy and space on RAID controller cards.
A single-core Jasper Forest processor consumes a maximum of 23 watts, while a quad-core processor consumes a maximum of 85 watts, resulting in decreased power consumption and denser storage designs. (The C5500/C3500 requires about 23 watts less power than the previous-generation Xeon processors.)
The asynchronous DRAM self-refresh (ADR) feature is data retention technology that provides “the ability to keep DRAM in a refresh state in case you lose power,” Tuhy explains.
The C5500/C3500’s PCIe non-transparent bridging (NTB) technology enables high-availability, active-active failover. And the integrated PCIe support and NTB allows multiple systems to connect over a PCIe link, eliminating the need for an external PCIe switch or hub chip.
Finally, the Jasper Forest processors have about 2X more bandwidth per watt than previous generation Xeon 5400 series processors, which enables the chips to support hundreds of disk drives as well as solid-state disk (SSD) drives, according to Tuhy.
The Xeon C5500/C3500 is typically integrated with Intel’s 3420 chip (see diagram), which has 12 USB 2.0 ports, six SATA ports, and eight PCIe 2.0 lanes.
Promise Technology, a RAID controller and array vendor, hopes to be among the first to deliver RAID arrays using the Jasper Forest processors. Promise plans to ship limited quantities of C5500/C3500-based storage systems in the fourth quarter, with production shipments expected in the first quarter of next year.
In a press release announcing its plans to integrate the Jasper Forest processors into future storage systems, Promise’s vice president of engineering, Jin-Lon Hon, called the C5500/C3500 “one of the most significant advancements in the storage industry in the past decade.”
For Promise, one of the key benefits of the C5500/C3500 is increased performance. Ray Bahar, Promise’s vice president of sales and marketing, expects a 4X to 6X increase in performance versus the previous generation Xeon processors that Promise has been using.
“With the older architecture we’re getting around 4GBps bandwidth, but the next generation will provide around 16GBps,” says Bahar.
He also likes the fact that the Jasper Forest processors integrate a variety of storage functions on a single ASIC, which “saves a lot of space on the controller board and significantly decreases power and thermal requirements,” says Bahar.
In addition, he says that the ability to scale from a single-core chip to a quad-core processor enables RAID arrays based on the C5500/C3500 to scale from the SMB market to large enterprises.
Finally, “much higher throughput eliminates the need for multiple RAID heads to get the same performance, so the overall cost to end users will be much less,” Bahar adds.
In addition to Promise Technology, AIC/Xtore has also announced support for the Jasper Forest processors. The company demonstrated its Orion Unified Storage Server, based on the C5500/C3500, at the NAB show earlier this year.
Side note: Jasper Forest is a petrified forest in Arizona.
Related article:
Intel previews Jasper Forest processors
David Tuhy, general manager in Intel’s Storage Group, says there are four key features that storage vendors and end users will benefit from: a built-in RAID accelerator, asynchronous DRAM self-refresh technology, PCIe non-transparent bridging, and increased bandwidth.
The C5500/C3500 includes an integrated accelerator (internally dubbed Crystal Beach) that offloads RAID-5 and RAID-6 processing and eliminates the need for a custom ASIC for RAID-5/6 operations. In addition to increasing performance, the RAID offload functionality saves energy and space on RAID controller cards.
A single-core Jasper Forest processor consumes a maximum of 23 watts, while a quad-core processor consumes a maximum of 85 watts, resulting in decreased power consumption and denser storage designs. (The C5500/C3500 requires about 23 watts less power than the previous-generation Xeon processors.)
The asynchronous DRAM self-refresh (ADR) feature is data retention technology that provides “the ability to keep DRAM in a refresh state in case you lose power,” Tuhy explains.
The C5500/C3500’s PCIe non-transparent bridging (NTB) technology enables high-availability, active-active failover. And the integrated PCIe support and NTB allows multiple systems to connect over a PCIe link, eliminating the need for an external PCIe switch or hub chip.
Finally, the Jasper Forest processors have about 2X more bandwidth per watt than previous generation Xeon 5400 series processors, which enables the chips to support hundreds of disk drives as well as solid-state disk (SSD) drives, according to Tuhy.
The Xeon C5500/C3500 is typically integrated with Intel’s 3420 chip (see diagram), which has 12 USB 2.0 ports, six SATA ports, and eight PCIe 2.0 lanes.
Promise Technology, a RAID controller and array vendor, hopes to be among the first to deliver RAID arrays using the Jasper Forest processors. Promise plans to ship limited quantities of C5500/C3500-based storage systems in the fourth quarter, with production shipments expected in the first quarter of next year.
In a press release announcing its plans to integrate the Jasper Forest processors into future storage systems, Promise’s vice president of engineering, Jin-Lon Hon, called the C5500/C3500 “one of the most significant advancements in the storage industry in the past decade.”
For Promise, one of the key benefits of the C5500/C3500 is increased performance. Ray Bahar, Promise’s vice president of sales and marketing, expects a 4X to 6X increase in performance versus the previous generation Xeon processors that Promise has been using.
“With the older architecture we’re getting around 4GBps bandwidth, but the next generation will provide around 16GBps,” says Bahar.
He also likes the fact that the Jasper Forest processors integrate a variety of storage functions on a single ASIC, which “saves a lot of space on the controller board and significantly decreases power and thermal requirements,” says Bahar.
In addition, he says that the ability to scale from a single-core chip to a quad-core processor enables RAID arrays based on the C5500/C3500 to scale from the SMB market to large enterprises.
Finally, “much higher throughput eliminates the need for multiple RAID heads to get the same performance, so the overall cost to end users will be much less,” Bahar adds.
In addition to Promise Technology, AIC/Xtore has also announced support for the Jasper Forest processors. The company demonstrated its Orion Unified Storage Server, based on the C5500/C3500, at the NAB show earlier this year.
Side note: Jasper Forest is a petrified forest in Arizona.
Related article:
Intel previews Jasper Forest processors
Thursday, June 24, 2010
PMC girds for channel battles, opportunities
June 24, 2010 – PMC-Sierra completed its acquisition of Adaptec earlier this month, and is now fine-tuning its game plan for entering the channel. PMC acquired Adaptec’s channel storage business, including its RAID hardware and software products.
PMC-Sierra paid approximately $34 million for Adaptec, which at one time (about ten years ago) had annual revenues in the $800-million ballpark.
In case you’re not on the chip side of the storage industry: PMC-Sierra is a fabless semiconductor company that originally focused on telcom chipsets but has since branched out into many other industries. The company entered the storage market about nine years ago with Fibre Channel chips, but has more recently focused on SAS chipsets. PMC’s enterprise storage business is now the company’s largest business segment.
Until the Adaptec acquisition, PMC-Sierra focused primarily on semiconductors for OEMs. But in addition to Adaptec’s RAID product line, PMC now has access to Adaptec’s extensive channel partner network.
“We’ll sell Adaptec’s products through their channel, but the acquisition also gives us an avenue to sell PMC products more broadly, beyond our OEMs,” says Mark Stibitz, vice president and general manager of PMC-Sierra’s enterprise storage business.
On the storage semiconductor front, PMC competes primarily with LSI and, to a lesser degree, vendors such as Marvell, Emulex, Intel and others.
On the RAID adapter/controller front in the channel, PMC will continue to compete most directly with LSI (which is the #1 vendor in the x86 RAID channel market, followed by Adaptec at #2), as well as other vendors such as HighPoint, Promise Technology, Areca and Atto Technology.
In other words, the PMC-LSI battle will turn into a war.
Meanwhile, LSI has expanded its channel presence by offering its white box partners external RAID building blocks (see “LSI expands in channel with external RAID”).
The channel-based x86 RAID market is estimated at $200 million/year.
Adaptec has been primarily using Intel’s RAID-On-Chip (ROC) ASICs in its 3Gbps SAS products, and will continue to develop and support the Intel-based products. But when the company makes the transition to 6Gbps SAS – its next major product introduction – it will use PMC-Sierra’s 6Gbps SAS chips, according to Jared Peters, formerly with Adaptec and now vice president and general manager of PMC’s channel storage division. The company is expected to release the PMC-based 6Gbps SAS products in the first quarter of 2011.
As a result of PMC’s acquisition, the vendor formerly known as Adaptec has changed its name to ADPT Corp.
Related articles from InfoStor:
PMC-Sierra to buy Adaptec’s channel storage business
LSI ships 6Gbps RAID array
Adaptec enables SSD + HDD RAID [MaxIQ SSD caching products]
PMC-Sierra paid approximately $34 million for Adaptec, which at one time (about ten years ago) had annual revenues in the $800-million ballpark.
In case you’re not on the chip side of the storage industry: PMC-Sierra is a fabless semiconductor company that originally focused on telcom chipsets but has since branched out into many other industries. The company entered the storage market about nine years ago with Fibre Channel chips, but has more recently focused on SAS chipsets. PMC’s enterprise storage business is now the company’s largest business segment.
Until the Adaptec acquisition, PMC-Sierra focused primarily on semiconductors for OEMs. But in addition to Adaptec’s RAID product line, PMC now has access to Adaptec’s extensive channel partner network.
“We’ll sell Adaptec’s products through their channel, but the acquisition also gives us an avenue to sell PMC products more broadly, beyond our OEMs,” says Mark Stibitz, vice president and general manager of PMC-Sierra’s enterprise storage business.
On the storage semiconductor front, PMC competes primarily with LSI and, to a lesser degree, vendors such as Marvell, Emulex, Intel and others.
On the RAID adapter/controller front in the channel, PMC will continue to compete most directly with LSI (which is the #1 vendor in the x86 RAID channel market, followed by Adaptec at #2), as well as other vendors such as HighPoint, Promise Technology, Areca and Atto Technology.
In other words, the PMC-LSI battle will turn into a war.
Meanwhile, LSI has expanded its channel presence by offering its white box partners external RAID building blocks (see “LSI expands in channel with external RAID”).
The channel-based x86 RAID market is estimated at $200 million/year.
Adaptec has been primarily using Intel’s RAID-On-Chip (ROC) ASICs in its 3Gbps SAS products, and will continue to develop and support the Intel-based products. But when the company makes the transition to 6Gbps SAS – its next major product introduction – it will use PMC-Sierra’s 6Gbps SAS chips, according to Jared Peters, formerly with Adaptec and now vice president and general manager of PMC’s channel storage division. The company is expected to release the PMC-based 6Gbps SAS products in the first quarter of 2011.
As a result of PMC’s acquisition, the vendor formerly known as Adaptec has changed its name to ADPT Corp.
Related articles from InfoStor:
PMC-Sierra to buy Adaptec’s channel storage business
LSI ships 6Gbps RAID array
Adaptec enables SSD + HDD RAID [MaxIQ SSD caching products]
Monday, June 14, 2010
Startup claims 1.5 million IOPS on RAID array
June 14, 2010 – Not so long ago, performance claims of one million IOPS seemed impressive (and suspect, and irrelevant). But 1.5 million IOPS?!
Startup Kaminario launched today with the introduction of its aptly-named K2 storage system. An entry-level configuration is spec’d at 300,000 IOPS and a high-end configuration delivers 1.5 million IOPS, or 16GBps of throughput, according to company officials.
There’s only one way to get that level of performance, and it ain’t short-stroking. In fact, it’s not even SLC NAND flash SSDs. You have to go with the fastest, most expensive type of storage device – DRAM.
Kaminario’s K2 RAID array is officially dubbed the K2 Performance Enterprise Data Appliance. The blade-based, scale-out architecture has two key building blocks: ioDirectors and Data Nodes.
The ioDirectors interface with hosts via 8Gbps Fibre Channel ports and, together with kOS software, are responsible for directing all read/write I/O requests. The Data Nodes store all data in DRAM (up to 288GB per node), although each node also includes two mirrored SAS disk drives, which are used only for data backup. The Data Nodes appear as a single logical unit. Users scale performance by adding ioDirectors.
The entry-level configuration that provides 300,000 IOPS and 3.2GB of throughput includes two ioDirectors. The 1.5-million IOPS configuration includes eight ioDirectors. The system has equal performance for both random and sequential I/O operations, according to Kaminario product manager Arik Kol.
Not surprisingly, all that performance comes at a steep price. The entry-level configuration (300,000 IOPS) with 1TB of DRAM is priced at $200,000. Yes, $200,000 per TB.
However, why go with a startup? Kaminario isn’t the first company to build super-fast storage systems with DRAM. Texas Memory Systems, for example, has been selling DRAM SSDs for decades.
If you’re in the market for systems of this caliber and cost, I’m sure you have the wherewithal to do in-depth evaluations, and there are many factors to consider, but let’s take a cursory look at some performance-price-capacity comparisons:
Kaminario is charging $200,000 for 1TB of DRAM capacity and 300,000 IOPS of performance.
You can buy two Texas Memory RamSan-440 DRAM arrays with 1TB of capacity and 1.2 million IOPS for $280,000. That’s 4X the performance for an extra $80k.
Kaminario isn’t the only vendor making solid-state memory news this week. Stay tuned to infostor.com’s News & Analysis section on Tuesday for info about two startups with interesting SSD plays – one with an SLC-based PCIe device, and another with an MLC-based SSD that the company claims rivals SLC SSDs in endurance – at a fraction of the cost.
Startup Kaminario launched today with the introduction of its aptly-named K2 storage system. An entry-level configuration is spec’d at 300,000 IOPS and a high-end configuration delivers 1.5 million IOPS, or 16GBps of throughput, according to company officials.
There’s only one way to get that level of performance, and it ain’t short-stroking. In fact, it’s not even SLC NAND flash SSDs. You have to go with the fastest, most expensive type of storage device – DRAM.
Kaminario’s K2 RAID array is officially dubbed the K2 Performance Enterprise Data Appliance. The blade-based, scale-out architecture has two key building blocks: ioDirectors and Data Nodes.
The ioDirectors interface with hosts via 8Gbps Fibre Channel ports and, together with kOS software, are responsible for directing all read/write I/O requests. The Data Nodes store all data in DRAM (up to 288GB per node), although each node also includes two mirrored SAS disk drives, which are used only for data backup. The Data Nodes appear as a single logical unit. Users scale performance by adding ioDirectors.
The entry-level configuration that provides 300,000 IOPS and 3.2GB of throughput includes two ioDirectors. The 1.5-million IOPS configuration includes eight ioDirectors. The system has equal performance for both random and sequential I/O operations, according to Kaminario product manager Arik Kol.
Not surprisingly, all that performance comes at a steep price. The entry-level configuration (300,000 IOPS) with 1TB of DRAM is priced at $200,000. Yes, $200,000 per TB.
However, why go with a startup? Kaminario isn’t the first company to build super-fast storage systems with DRAM. Texas Memory Systems, for example, has been selling DRAM SSDs for decades.
If you’re in the market for systems of this caliber and cost, I’m sure you have the wherewithal to do in-depth evaluations, and there are many factors to consider, but let’s take a cursory look at some performance-price-capacity comparisons:
Kaminario is charging $200,000 for 1TB of DRAM capacity and 300,000 IOPS of performance.
You can buy two Texas Memory RamSan-440 DRAM arrays with 1TB of capacity and 1.2 million IOPS for $280,000. That’s 4X the performance for an extra $80k.
Kaminario isn’t the only vendor making solid-state memory news this week. Stay tuned to infostor.com’s News & Analysis section on Tuesday for info about two startups with interesting SSD plays – one with an SLC-based PCIe device, and another with an MLC-based SSD that the company claims rivals SLC SSDs in endurance – at a fraction of the cost.
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