Posts Tagged ‘database’
Posted June 25th, 2012
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Kaminario Will Always Be All Solid-State SAN Storage
THOUGHTS ON A POST BY RUBEN SPRUIJT
By Gareth Taube, Vice President Marketing, Kaminario
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One of the challenges of offering a unique product is that sometimes it can be difficult for outsiders to classify it with other solutions in the market. So we see, from time to time, published articles that either put the K2 in the wrong bucket or don’t describe the K2’s capabilities completely.
Such is the case with a recent blog by Ruben Spruijt that discusses different types of SSD solutions including hybrid file systems, Flash-only arrays and server-side Flash. While it is true that the Kaminario K2 offers a single enclosure for blade servers connected with Flash, it is not accurate to include the K2 in the server-side Flash category. Spruijt does not specifically call out Kaminario as a server-side SSD solution, but it appears that way from the mention.
Kaminario Makes All Solid-State SAN Storage — Absent a category for all solid-state SAN storage to include Flash and DRAM, Spruijt should have mentioned the K2 in his Flash-only array discussion. As my colleague Eyal Markovich said, “server-based PCIe cards are, by nature, local to the server, so they cannot serve as part of a server cluster. That means they’re out as an SSD solution for running Oracle Real Application Clusters (RAC) or an SQL Server instance as part of a Microsoft Cluster. Since the K2 is SAN-based, it fully supports these clustering configurations.” This is just one example why readers should understand that the K2 is a solid-state SAN storage array versus a server-side SSD solution.
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Tags:application performance, database, Database Performance, DataProtect, Disk latency, Flash, Flash SSD, high availability, I/O bottlenecks, IOPS, K2, Kaminario, Storage Performance, writes
Posted in SSD Storage Performance | 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 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 February 23rd, 2012
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Hey IBM Power System Users, You Have a Choice
THE K2 HAS FULL AIX SUPPORT AND A LOT OF ADVANTAGES COMPARED TO THE USUAL SUSPECTS.
By Gareth Taube, Vice President Marketing, Kaminario
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EMC made a big splash early this month with its Project Lightning announcement, but at just about the same time IBM made a quieter announcement, packing an SSD cache into its XIV storage system to help with demanding workloads such as analytics, cloud computing, and virtualization. In fact IBM made a point of claiming that TCO for the XIV generation 3 was 69 percent lower than with the equivalent EMC system.
It’s easy to get caught up in the clash of the titans, especially if you’re running databases on AIX-based IBM Power Systems, as the AIX storage options out there are limited. However, AIX users have a choice beyond the usual suspects: Kaminario’s K2 is one of the few pure SSD array solutions with full support for AIX. Here are some reasons you may want to consider the K2 for your I/O-intensive Power System workloads.
The K2 is a Pure SSD Solution – As with EMC’s Project Lightning, IBM’s XIV system uses SSD as a kind of cache band-aid for slow disk storage, moving data in and out of cache according to complex algorithms. The disadvantage: As with Project Lightning, the IBM cache is for reads only, so you won’t get the fast writes you get with the K2; you won’t get the performance until the right data is moved into the cache; you’re likely to get some cache misses; and all that cache data is duplicated on disk storage, which is not the most efficient solution.
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Tags:AIX, analytics, cache, cloud computing, database, David, disk controller, EMC, Goliath, I/O, IBM, IBM XIV, K2, K2 Hybrid, Kaminario, OLTP, performance bottleneck, Power Systems, Project Lightning, reads, SPEAR, SSD, SSD array, TCO, virtualization, write-intensive workloads, writes
Posted in Hybrid Storage | No Comments »
Posted December 17th, 2011
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The End of High-End Disk Storage?
SSD ISN’T JUST HOT, IT’S A CATEGORY KILLER
By Gareth Taube, Vice President Marketing, Kaminario
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IDC’s recently published Worldwide Solid State Storage Quarterly Update confirms what we’ve seen and said for months: SSD is hot and poised for a takeoff. According to IDC, SSD shipments jumped a whopping 67 percent to 6.66 million in the third quarter of 2011 compared to 4 million in the third quarter of 2010. Revenue from SSD sales took a similar leap of 91.6 percent to approximately $1.29 billion from $673 million in the third quarter of last year.
IDC further divides the growth by enterprise, client, and commercial segments and finds 110 percent revenue growth to $522 million in SSD for enterprise data storage arrays and servers. Client SSD sales, which are mostly for PC’s and laptops, more than doubled from $354 million to $716 million. This is on top of 2010, which was already a record year for SSD growth, according to IDC. Only the commercial segment, which consists of medical equipment, factory automation, aerospace, and military systems, saw a decrease in SSD sales from $70.7 million to $59.7 million. In an article in ComputerWorld, IDC is quoted saying that SSD is just now reaching the mainstream.
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Tags:client, commercial, database, enterprise, factory automation, IDC, K2, Kaminario, laptop, PC, SATA, SQL, SSD, storage array, storage trends, Worldwide Solid State Storage Quarterly Update
Posted in SSD Architectures | No Comments »
Posted December 7th, 2011
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Get the Most I/O Performance from Your SAP Oracle Applications
NEW ACCELERATING SAP PERFORMANCE AND SCALABILITY WHITEPAPER AVAILABLE NOW
By Gareth Taube, Vice President Marketing, Kaminario
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We frequently speak with organizations that are considering consolidating their database applications to improve system management and flexibility as well as reduce costs. One popular area where consolidation is a hot topic is ERP applications. In a recent post, we talked about how the Israel Electric Company improved their SAP transaction speed by up to 25 times by using the Kaminario K2 all solid-state SAN storage solution. What this company and others like it found is that even if you put a lot of computing horsepower into your servers and databases, your application performance can suffer if your storage system can’t keep up. And, simply adding more disks doesn’t solve the problem. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags:application performance, Applications, database, DRAM, ERP, Flash, I/O bottlenecks, I/O Performance, Kaminario, Kaminario K2, Oracle, SAP, SSD, Storage
Posted in SSD Storage Performance | 2 Comments »
Posted November 16th, 2011
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StorageMojo White Paper Assesses Flash and DRAM Solid-state SAN Storage on Database Performance
By Kaminario
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Written by Robin Harris of StorageMojo, an independent analyst firm focused on emerging IT technologies, “Database Performance and the Kaminario K2 All Solid-State SAN Storage” discusses how storage systems are not keeping up with today’s applications’ requirements for data intensive workloads and points out that “as numerous performance benchmarks and customer experience show, solid-state storage, especially that using a mix of media, is simply the fastest mass storage available.” Click here to read the entire report.
Tags:database, Database Performance, DRAM, DRAM SSD, Flash, Flash Solid-state storage, Flash SSD, Kaminario, MCL Flash, Robin Harris, SANs, Solid-state SANs, StorageMojo
Posted in SSD Storage Performance | No Comments »
Posted November 8th, 2011
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Everything You Always Wanted to Know About SSD But….
A NEW REPORT FROM STORAGE STRATEGIES NOW TELLS IT ALL
By Gareth Taube, Vice President Marketing, Kaminario
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It’s easy to get overwhelmed trying to grasp the rapidly growing and evolving SSD market, particularly with the constant announcements of new products, players, and architectures, and the competing claims of vendors and technology proponents. If you’re finding the whole SSD business a bit hard to follow then you should take a look at the recently released report from Storage Strategies NOW entitled Solid State Drives and High Speed Memory: Adoption, Practice, and Deployment, partially sponsored by Kaminario.
The report contains 58 pages of survey results, market projections, technology and vendor comparisons, architectures, best practices, testing information, and case studies from an analyst firm that was following the SSD market years before everyone and his cousin was talking about it. It’s full of good information and, despite a length that may seem intimidating, is an easy, quick read. You’ll find clear, concise answers to just about all your questions about Flash, DRAM, SLC, MLC, caching, tiering, wear leveling, interfaces, and more, as well as an interesting use case involving Digital Trowel’s use of the Kaminario K2 to accelerate the cleaning and matching of more than 10 billion records.
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Tags:caching, database, DRAM, Flash, high performance computing, high-speed memory, interfaces, K2, Kaminario, MLC, OLTP, SLC, SSD, SSD architecture, ssd market, Storage Strategies NOW, tiering, transactional structured data, wear leveling
Posted in SSD TCO | No Comments »
Posted August 17th, 2011
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The Rumors of DRAM’s Demise are Greatly Exaggerated
DRAM IS ALIVE AND KICKING
By Gareth Taube, Vice President Marketing, Kaminario
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The notion that flash is causing trouble for the DRAM market has been in the media for several months now, but it really took off with a July, 2011 study by Objective Analysis that concluded that in most cases NAND flash provided a greater PC performance boost per dollar than DRAM. The study tested many different PC configurations of DRAM and flash with more than 300 benchmarks and found its conclusion valid in just about every configuration. Over time the price difference will widen, says the report, and flash will become the memory form factor of choice on most PC’s.
Why? Even though the performance of DRAM is superior to that of flash, the difference is negligible to the PC user and becomes even more negligible when you can cram in lots more flash for the same number of dollars as DRAM.
Subsequent articles, blogs, and other analyses have come close to declaring DRAM all but dead, not only in PC’s, but in servers as well.
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Tags:analytics, database, DRAM, DRAM market, enterprise application performance, Flash, hybrid, I/O, IOP, latency, NAND, Online Transaction Processing, reads, SAN, SSD, SSD SAN, writes
Posted in SSD Architectures | No Comments »
Posted March 1st, 2011
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Solving database performance problems with better storage performance
By Eyal Markovich
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Any database can be negatively impacted by data access bottlenecks (“I/O wait”) which will result in slow application response time. I/O wait is the total duration that the working processes of a database or application session are blocked while waiting for I/O operations to complete. High I/O wait can mean that your storage device is providing “unacceptable” services to your database or other mission critical applications, resulting in low customer satisfaction and employee productivity. If the organization took the time to examine the storage-issues related to I/O wait before simply upgrading system hardware.
In his recent blog post, Dan Kusnetzky, Distinguished Analyst at The Kusnetzky Group, discusses his recent paper on database performance and I/O bottlenecks, “Solving database performance problems with better storage performance.”
Tags:application performance, Dan Kusnetzky, database, Database Performance, Disk latency, disk wait, I/O bottlenecks, I/O wait, RDBMS Performance, Storage Performance
Posted in Oracle Database Performance | No Comments »
