IBM FlashSystem® Family

Stephen “Esteban” Andert

Storage Solutions Engineering

IBM FlashSystem

IT infrastructure challenges

Performance

Gap

CPU performance up 10x this last decade

Storage has grown capacity but unable to keep up in performance

Systems are now Latency & IO bound resulting in significant performance gap

From 1980 to 2010, CPU performance has grown 60% per year*

…and yet, disk performance has grown ~5% per year during that same period**

IntroducingIBM FlashCore

© 2015 IBM Corporation3

™

Enabling the use of Flash in the Enterprise

A significant portion of IBM’s strategic billion $ investment in FlashSystem has been dedicated to overcome these issues

But …

IBM FlashCore Technology: Overcomes Tough Obstacles

• Less and less electrons on the floating gate

• More and more cell to cell interference

• Data retention harder

• Bit error rate increases

• Common solutions to correct errors often result in more latency!

Density increasing and cost decreasing AND really, really fast!

IBM MicroLatency™ Module Key Differentiators

Innovative ECC algorithm corrects very high bit error rates (does not require additional reads)

Health binning and heat segregationFlashCore technology continually assesses health by monitoring several key parameters Hotter data placed in healthier blocks –Up to 57% improvement in endurance!Write Amplification reduced by up to 45% by grouping like heat levels

The IBM and Micron collaboration provides special access to the Flash

Extensive characterization determined optimal read offsets to set as block ages

Powerful checks on entire data path, including inside the flash modules

Variable Stripe RAID reduces what needs to be retired

Results:

Large endurance gains w/o latency penalty

Asymmetrical wear leveling results in higher endurance in real life workloads!

As the part ages and we determine the health of each block, the ideal voltage levels are set in order to minimize errors!

Outstanding data reliability and improved endurance

Form Factor SSD• Flash failure = Disk failure• Requires top-level RAID• Relatively frequent hot-swaps

Enterprise Flash Drive or Memory Module• Flash failure = Degraded state within module• Performance impact on RAID set• Hot-swap to resolve

FlashSystem with Variable Stripe RAID• Preserves Flash life• Preserves performance• Re-parity data in microseconds

Parity

Parity

No Parity

Less maintenance touches while still preserving the life, protection, and performance of the Day-1 experience

Value of Variable Stripe RAID

IBM Variable Stripe RAID™ (VSR)

IBM FlashSystem in the IBM Systems Enterprise Storage Portfolio

© IBM Corporation 2016 IBM & IBM Business Partner Use Only 7

IBM FlashSystem 900

© IBM Corporation 2016 IBM & IBM Business Partner Use Only 8

Key features include:

• IBM FlashCore technology, which is designed to deliver

consistent high performance and lower storage costs

• IBM-enhanced flash for higher storage density and

improved endurance

• Improved availability with Variable Stripe RAID, redundant and

hot-swappable components, and concurrent code load

• ENERGY STAR-certified efficiency

• Usable capacity from 2 TB to 57 TB

Environments

Examples

App Accelerator

& Spectrum

Booster

Oracle, DB2, SQL Server,

MySQL, Sybase, NoSQL,

Spectrum Booster (Storage services provided

by application)

FlashSystem 900

IBM OfferingsPerformance

IBM FlashSystem 900 is designed to

address application acceleration

requirements in the most challenging,

mission-critical environments.

IBM FlashSystem V9000

© IBM IBM & IBM Business Partner 9

Database &

Analytics

Oracle, DB2, SQL Server,

MySQL, NoSQL, SAP,

Watson, Hadoop,

Spark, Tealeaf

Key features include:• IBM FlashCore technology, which is designed to deliver consistent high

performance and lower storage costs

• IBM-enhanced flash for higher storage density and improved endurance

• Improved availability with Variable Stripe RAID, redundant and hot-swappable

components, and concurrent code load

• Set of virtualization and storage features, including Real-

time Compression, dynamic tiering, thin provisioning, data

copy services and high availability configurations

• With virtualization, up to 32 PB of external storage can be

managed by a single FlashSystem V9000

• Usable Capacity: 2.4 TB to 456 TB;

Effective Capacity: 12 TB to 2.5 PB

Environments

Examples

IBM OfferingsPerformance

FlashSystem V9000

Software-

defined

option

IBM FlashSystem V9000 offers the advantages

of software-defined storage at the speed of flash

memory.

IBM FlashSystem A9000

10

Key features include:• IBM FlashCore technology, which is designed to deliver consistent high performance and

lower storage costs

• IBM-enhanced flash for higher storage density and improved endurance

• Improved availability with Variable Stripe RAID, redundant and hot-swappable components,

and concurrent code load

• “White Glove” support model

• Integrated data reduction with inline pattern removal, data

deduplication, compression and thin provisioning

• Enterprise-grade encryption and space-efficient snapshots

• New GUI with IBM Hyper-Scale Manager designed with cloud-

optimized QoS features

• Effective Capacity: 60 TB, 150 TB, or 300 TB

Environments

Examples

IBM Offerings

Cloud & Virtual

VDI, hybrid cloud

deployment, CSPs,

mixed workloads, multi-

tenancy

Software-

defined

option

FlashSystem A9000

IBM FlashSystem A9000 offers high performance,

self-tuning, flash-optimized, InfiniBand-powered,

highly parallel grid storage architecture.

IBM FlashSystem A9000R

11

Key features include:• IBM FlashCore technology, which is designed to deliver consistent high

performance and lower storage costs

• IBM-enhanced flash for higher storage density and improved endurance

• Improved availability with Variable Stripe RAID, redundant and hot-

swappable components, and concurrent code load

• Integrated data reduction with inline pattern removal, data deduplication,

compression and thin provisioning

• Enterprise-grade encryption and space-efficient snapshots

• New GUI with IBM Hyper-Scale Manager designed with cloud-optimized

QoS features

• “White Glove” support model

• Grid storage architecture enables multiple-copy, multi-

site data protection

• Easy scale-out capabilities

• Effective Capacity: 300 TB to 1.8 PB

Environments

Examples

IBM OfferingsPerformance

Cloud & Virtual

VDI, hybrid cloud

deployment, CSPs,

mixed workloads, multi-

tenancy

FlashSystem

A9000R

Software-

defined

option

Performance

Capacity FlashSystem A9000

IBM FlashSystem A9000R is a pre-configured

fully-integrated rack-based platform.

| 12IBM FlashSystem © 2016 IBM Corporation Confidential: IBM and IBM Business Partners Use Only

A9000R Architectural Grid Elements

Entry Configuration Includes:

• Mellanox 36 port InfiniBand Switch – FDR 56Gbps

• Internal redundant BBU solution

• Management Module

• Custom design 20KW PDU

• Cascade control connectors

• Four 2U Grid Controllers (Servers w/ 10 CPU cores)

• 4 x 16Gb FC + 2 x 10Gb iSCSI or 4 x 10Gb iSCSI

• 384GB DRAM cache ( for a maximum of 4.6TB DRAM cache)

Expansion (Grid Element):

• Two 2U Grid Controllers + one 2U Flash Enclosure

• Two 2U Flash Enclosures

• 29TB (300TB effective capacity) or 57TB (as much as 1.8PM effective capacity)

Data Reduction Processing

Data reduction methods:

8KB pattern detection

Deduplication

Compression

13

Pattern

Removal Deduplication Compression

64KB

User Write

Pattern Removal is a special case of deduplication. We essentially take

the hash of the data and compare that to the hash of known patterns. If

a match is found, we can use that hash to reference the data.

Thank you

Gracias