Celerity - [suh-ler-i-tee]. Noun. Swiftness; speed.
So, what would happen if Celerity were to be coupled with IBM's new FlashSystems?
Our Technical Headquarters excitedly took delivery of some new toys last month and have since been playing, training and testing 2 IBM FlashSystem boxes ever since. If all goes to plan then next month we aim to take over the world! Well ok, these FlashSystem boxes might not be quite that good, but they are certainly making us explore the new opportunities that are available to clients now that we have them in our possession.
HDDs may be getting bigger but they are not getting faster. We all know that SSDs are much faster than HDDs, but they cannot realise their potential because they are stuck behind a slow disc interface. Late last year IBM acquired solid state veterans of 34 years Texas Memory Systems for their flash memory based systems, later to be re-named IBM FlashSystems as part of the IBM System Storage portfolio. IBM’s flash memory storage arrays remove the bottlenecks of HDDs and SSDs which greatly speeds up access to your data held on flashcards containing the fastest 32nm Toshiba flash chips. The flashcards use DRAM as a buffer to help achieve up to 570,000 read IOPS with less than 100 ms latency. With 4 models offering up to 24 TB storage in a 1U enclosure using less than 400 watts, it offers one of the industry’s best IOPS per watt ratio.
IBM Flash System arrays give reliability; small footprint, low power consumption and low latency that makes them perfect to accelerate Oracle, DB2, SQL databases, VDI and critical applications on Windows, Linux and AIX. Reduced I/O wait time can increase CPU efficiency allowing more to be done in less time, resulting in a lower total cost of ownership. To get the performance of a FlashSystem using traditional HDD arrays would need the equivalent of up to 750 HDDs, with all the power, cooling and space requirements to go along with them!
IBM FlashSystems are built for micro latency. They let you access your data fast, but they can also integrate with IBM’s SAN Volume Controller (SVC) and IBM Storwize V7000 to allow extra features such as easy tier, preferred read and manual data placement, to give a huge boost in performance by storing hot data on the faster flashcards, and cool data on slower cheaper HDDs and SSDs. This means that they can be dropped into your existing data centre to give you that increase in performance whilst still keeping existing storage.
The lower capacity (1–10TB) 710 and 720 arrays use single level cell (SLC) chips which offer a 33x improvement in endurance over some vendor’s multi-level cell (MLC) chips. The higher capacity (6-24TB) 810 and 820 arrays use Enterprise-grade eMLC chips; which typically offer 10x greater chip longevity on writes over that of standard MLC. Endurance is improved and systems are protected with; ECC at chip level; Variable stripe RAID (VSR - to protect against chip failure); 2D flash Raid (eliminates single point of failure); wear levelling and over provisioning. Hot swappable parts and the 2 management NICs on the 720 and 820 give them enterprise reliability and with the on-board batteries data can be written to the flash chips in the event of a power outage.
The low TCO and high ROI of IBM FlashSystems means that your business will perform better and allow you to pursue new opportunities using your existing hardware and software - you’re undoubtedly missing out if you do not at least consider flash memory technology to enhance your storage environment.
Please contact a Celerity Representative for more information on IBM FlashSystems.
IBM FLASHSYSTEM ASSESSMENT FOR ORACLE
Submit a 1 hour Oracle AWR, or Statspack report and we will provide you with a FREE detailed performance assessment to demonstrate how much of an improvement FlashSystems can bring to your organisation. You can then actually experience these benefits in your own environment with a 2 week on-site trial of the equipment – what have you got to lose?
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