Archive for May, 2012
Posted May 30th, 2012
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Don’t Forget Data Protection and High Availability
PERHAPS THE KAMINARIO K2 IS A CROSS BETWEEN A LAMBORGHINI AND A VOLVO
By Gareth Taube, Vice President Marketing, Kaminario
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In Howard Marks’ Network Computing column yesterday, he makes the point that there are different performance tiers among SSD storage arrays. He uses a car metaphor to differentiate vendor offerings by speed. It is fun, creative and definitely flattering to be compared to a Lamborghini. However, as we usually do, we would like to make a few comments.
Speed is not enough to distinguish among SSD storage arrays
We started 2012 off by proclaiming it was the Year of the SSD. Since then, we have discussed frequently that while IOPs and latency are important to convince organizations to adopt SSD, speed is not enough. Data protection and high availability are particularly important to enterprise customers. Many customers we speak with say data protection is equally important to them as speed in determining whether to adopt SSD arrays in their data center. So it would be nice to extend Marks’ car metaphor to include data protection. In fact, if a Lamborghini could cross-breed with a Volvo, the offspring would be a lot closer metaphor for the Kaminario K2.
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Tags:application performance, Database Performance, DataProtect, DeepStorageNet, DRAM-based SSD Appliances, Howard Marks, Oracle, RDBMS Performance, SSD, Storage Performance
Posted in Data Protection | No Comments »
Posted May 29th, 2012
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PedMed Express Recovers from Sluggish Database and Application Performance
SHOWS A 400% IMPROVEMENT IN DATABASE REPORTING AND WAREHOUSE OPERATIONS
By Gareth Taube, Vice President Marketing, Kaminario
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Don’t worry… we don’t plan to tell this story using a lot of cute medical or pet metaphors (aside from the title and sub-title of this article). The PedMed Express case study is a serious example of a business that was faced with database and application issues, which were leading them toward every IT manager’s nightmare…replacing their existing storage infrastructure. With I/O bottlenecks slowing down its daily reporting and warehouse operations, PedMed Express was on the verge of making the costly decision to replace its storage infrastructure with a higher performance solution, but was cautious about the issues around SSD reliability.
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Tags:Database Performance, I/O bottlenecks, K2, Kaminario, PedMed Express, PetMeds, Solid State Storage, solid-state SAN storage, SSD, Storage Performance
Posted in SSD Case Studies | No Comments »
Posted May 25th, 2012
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Following Up on GridIron’s Response
CONTINUING THE ORACLE PERFORMANCE DISCUSSION
By Eyal Markovich
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Last week, a GridIron representative published a response to my original post about solving Oracle performance problems. The response includes some valid points but shows that the author is not familiar with the Kaminario K2’s full capabilities.
GridIron: There is no such thing as non-disruptive deployment of new storage arrays. In a production environment, halting a system to perform data migration, validate that migration and then restart the environment can be time and resource intensive. Converting existing scripts and operating procedures to use a new vendor’s snapshot features can be equally complicated and risky. With GridIron’s transparent network-based deployment, no changes are required to business processes or applications and there is no data migration involved – it is truly non-disruptive!
Kaminario Response: Yes, in many cases, customers will plan a downtime window for uploading data to Kaminario. In cases where such downtime is unavoidable, a customer can dynamically build a mirror (ASM or OS). When the mirror is completed, the customer can decide whether to drop the old storage or keep it. GridIron claims they are a truly non-disruptive solution, but I wonder what happens when their boxes fail. Based on a GridIron document, a failed unit can be bypassed through simple zoning changes in the Fibre Channel fabric. Applying Fibre Channel zoning in an active system may affect the entire fabric and it is not a recommended operation. To avoid this, customers will need some mirroring solution with two GridIron boxes (one acting as a mirror) and sophisticated configurations to make their solution truly HA. This seems very expensive, and I am not sure how feasible it is.
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Tags:application performance, database, GridIron, I/O bottlenecks, IOPS, K2, Kaminario, Oracle, RAID, RDBMS Performance, Storage Performance
Posted in Hybrid Storage | No Comments »
Posted May 22nd, 2012
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Go Beyond Raw Numbers When Considering All Flash Arrays
EVALUATION REQUIRES LOOKING AT IOPS & LATENCY IN REALISTIC SCENARIOS
By Eyal Markovich
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Last week, I participated in an interesting conversation about performance measurement. The jist of it was that IOPS and latency are related. Properly evaluating an array’s performance requires examination of both. For example, what happens to latency when IOPS double?
Latency is the critical performance measurement for most applications. This is especially true for relational databases because they often drive a few thousands of IOPS. Improve latency and you will improve application performance. Keep in mind latency changes based on workloads.
Below are a few things to consider when comparing performance numbers of all SSD SAN storage.
Look Beyond Raw Numbers in Realistic Workloads
If you are discussing performance with a Flash array vendor, look beyond an IOPS number and a latency number. Ask how they work together in realistic workloads. It is possible to achieve a stellar latency number if you run a small, synthetic IO transaction. The question is what happens when you test a workload that really stresses the array? Or, what is the performance on a realistic workload such as a database with 70 percent reads and 30 percent writes with difference IO sizes? Unlike a card in a server which usually serves only one application, an array will serve several. Each application needs improved latency. However, the more applications you host on an array, the higher the IOPS. What is the effect of adding IOPS to latency by each application? You should work with a SSD vendor to understand the correlation between IOPS and latency on demanding workloads.
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Tags:Flash, Flash SSD, I/O wait, IOPS, K2, Kaminario, latency, Storage Performance
Posted in Data Protection | No Comments »
Posted May 14th, 2012
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Thoughts on Solving Oracle Performance Problems
SOME DIFFERENCES BETWEEN FLASH CACHING APPLIANCES AND SSD SANS IN ORACLE APPLICATIONS
By Eyal Markovich
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George Crump, of Storage Switzerland, published an interesting post recently titled Cost Effectively Solving Oracle Performance Problems. Crump explains the challenges of solving Oracle storage performance problems (including several Oracle instances) while keeping Oracle data in shared storage.
In his analysis, Crump details three solid-state storage solutions that address Oracle performance:
- Augmentation to existing mechanical storage via tiering or caching;
- Using SSD on Oracle’s application server itself to cache data;
- Using forklift upgrade solutions or database machines such as Oracle Exadata.
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Tags:application performance, database, Disk latency, Flash, I/O bottlenecks, K2, Kaminario, OLTP, Oracle, Oracle database, preferred read
Posted in Oracle Database Performance | No Comments »
Posted May 7th, 2012
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Array Rumble at Storage Tech Field Day
SSD ARRAY VENDORS FACE OFF OVER SOLID-STATE STORAGE ARCHITECTURES
By Gareth Taube, Vice President Marketing, Kaminario
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Another interesting seminar at Stephen Foskett’s Tech Field Day, hosted by Nigel Poulton, addressed the best architecture for an SSD array. Participants included Thomas Isakovich, CEO and Founder of Nimbus Data Systems, Umesh Maheswhari, CTO and founder of Nimble Storage, Jonathan Goldick, software CTO at Violin Memory, and Dave Wright, founder and CEO of SolidFire. It was a pretty lively debate, with Goldick grinning broadly through much of it and taking jabs at the others. One couldn’t help but wonder what he was grinning about.
The truth is, there was a lot of disagreement over the best array architecture and sometimes the argument got a tad heated and personal, much to the delight of the audience. However, there were three things everyone could agree to. First, the best architecture is one that provides an ideal balance of scalability, share ability, reliability, and performance, not performance alone. Second, for all but the few most performance- and latency-sensitive applications, it’s more important to provide consistent, predictable performance for an array of applications, than to provide the absolute best performance. And third, the best architecture is a mix of commodity hardware and a software architecture designed from the ground up for SSD. Sound familiar? Read the rest of this entry »
Tags:architecture, cache, Dave Wright, deduplication, disk, Flash, hybrid, Jonathan Goldick, Kaminario, latency, Nigel Poulton, Nimble Storage, Nimbus Data Systems, off-the-shelf hardware, scale-out architecture, SolidFire, SSD, SSD array, Stephen Foskett, Tech Field Day, Thomas Esakovich, tiering, Umesh Maheshwari, Violin Memory Systems
Posted in SSD Storage Performance | 2 Comments »
Posted May 2nd, 2012
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Kaminario’s Dani Golan Speaks at Tech Field Day
SOLID-STATE STORAGE IS THE NEXT BIG IT REVOLUTION
By Gareth Taube, Vice President Marketing, Kaminario
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Last week, Kaminario CEO Dani Golan presented at Stephen Foskett’s Tech Field Day in San Jose. The event afforded us the opportunity to have conversations with several data storage bloggers including Howard Marks, Nigel Poulton, Chris Evans, Ray Lucchesi, Robin Harris and Hans DeLeenheer to name a few.
I was fortunate to be in the room, and the feedback I heard is gratifying. In fact, DeLeenheer published his thoughts about Kaminario in his blog and said we were worth watching.
In addition to providing a K2 product overview, Golan shared insights about the SSD market and where Kaminario fits. “Solid-state storage is the biggest storage revolution in the last 30 years…one of the biggest in IT since virtualization.”
One of the effects of this revolution is that definitions for high end, mid range and low end are being turned on their head. Improving price/performance and increasing application requirements make it tough to distinguish among tier 0, tier 1, tier 2 etc. I would argue “that our software stack is far superior to a $3 million high-end [HDD] array,” Golan said.
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Tags:Database Performance, Disk latency, DRAM, DRAM Storage, DRAM-based SSD Appliances, Flash, Flash SSD, Foskett, IOPS, Kaminario, Tech Field Day
Posted in SSD Storage Performance | 1 Comment »
