Category: Standards

New SIG for SSD Data Recovery/Erase Formed – Calls Open to All Interested Participants

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SSDs present particular challenges when trying to erase all data or attempting to recover data from a broken drive. To address these issues, a new Data Recovery/Erase Special Interest Group has been formed within the SNIA Solid State Storage Initiative.

The goal of the SIG is to provide a forum in which solution providers and solid state storage manufacturers can collaborate to enable data recovery and erase capabilities in solid state storage in such a way as to ensure that customer demands for these services can be met in a cost-effective and timely manner, with a high likelihood of success. A key to the success of the SIG is obtaining input and participation from all of the key stakeholders: solid state storage manufacturers, data recovery and erase solution providers, and solid state storage customers.

The SIG will be having a limited number of conference calls that will be open to non-members. Go to http://www.snia.org/forums/sssi/dresig for more details and to register for the first open meeting.

It’s “All About M.2 SSDs” In a New SSSI Webcast June 10

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Interested in M.2, the new SSD card form factor?

The SNIA Solid State Storage Initiative is partnering with SATA-IO and NVM Express to give you the latest information on M.2, the new SSD card form factor.  Join us “live” on Tuesday, June 10, at 10:00 am Pacific time/1:00 pm Eastern time.

Hear from a panel of experts, including Tom Coughlin of Coughlin Associates, Jim Handy of Objective Analysis, Jon Tanguy of Micron, Jaren May of TE Connectivity, David Akerson of Intel, and Eden Kim of Calypso Systems.  You will leave this webinar with an understanding of the M.2 market, M.2 cards and connection schemes, NVM Express, and M.2 performance. You’ll also be able to ask questions of the experts.

You can access this webcast via the internet.  Click here, or visit http://snia.org/news_events/multimedia#webcasts

SSSI Sheds Light on Solid State Storage at Flash Memory Summit

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If you attended Flash Memory Summit along with thousands of other business professionals, you soon learned that solid state keynotes, breakouts, and show floor booths, while informative, could be mystifying.  Fortunately, the SNIA Solid State Storage Initiative (SSSI) was at FMS to provide enlightenment in the form of a SSS Reception, four new publications on SSS, and three SSSI member demonstrations.

SSSI’s second annual SSS Reception was attended by over 90 individualIMG_6196s and featured presentations by SSSI Governing Board members Paul Wassenberg of Marvell, Walt Hubis of Fusion-io, and Eden Kim of Calypso Systems on SSSI key programs and technical work.   SSSI Education Chair Tom Coughlin of Coughlin Associates delivered a market update on ubiquitous flash memory.   All SSSI members are eligible and encouraged to join specification development, education, and outreach programs, and new companies are welcome to join SSSI activities.

At the SSSI Booth, attendees snapped up new white papers and Tech Notes authored by SSSI members.  These papers are complimentary to all interested individuals and available on the SSSI education page.

  • The PCI Express (PCIe) 101 – An Overview of Standards, Markets, and Performance white paper surveys the broad landscape of emerging high performance PCIe storage and the implications of revolutionary applications of these new architectures.  Thirteen members of the SNIA SSSI PCIe SSD Committee representing eleven SNIA and SSSI member companies contributed their technical expertise to this paper, which covers standards, programming models for non-volatile memory, the PCIe SSD market, and PCIe SSD performance.
  • The SSD Performance – A Primer white paper, authored by SNIA SSS Technical Work Group chair Eden Kim of Calypso Systems, provides an introduction to solid state drive performance, evaluation, and test.  As noted in the Foreword by SSSI Founder and 2008-2010 SSSI Chair Phil Mills of IBM, “this paper is an excellent tutorial on the performance of solid state drives, which covers this topic in a very easy to understand way, yet provides detailed technical information that the reader can either dig into for a better understanding, or simply skip without missing the main points”.
  • A new PTS User Guide Tech Note delivers the hows and whys of the SNIA Solid State Performance Test Specification.  Authored by SNIA SSSI members Eden Kim of Calypso Systems and Chuck Paradon of HP, this Tech Note provides an easy to understand, step-by step guide to using the SNIA SSS Performance Test Specification (PTS) test methodologies and tests. The Tech Note discusses four basic PTS 1.1 tests – Write Saturation (WSAT), IOPS, Throughput (TP) and Response Time (or Latency) – as updated per SNIA draft PTS-E version 1.1.
  • The SSSI Workload I/O Capture Program (WIOCP) FAQ, authored by SNIA SSSI member Tom West of hyperI/O LLC, gives details on this project undertaken by the SNIA SSSI to collect I/O operation performance metrics. These empirical metrics reflect the actual I/O operation activity performed during normal, everyday application/workload usage spanning both consumer/client and enterprise systems.

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Also in the booth, the Media, Entertainment and Scientific Storage (MESS) Meetup group chatted with end users, and SSSI members exhibited new solid state storage solutions for enterprise markets:

  • BitMicro  presented a high performance MaxIO drive incorporating BiTMICRO’s ultra fast Talino Quad Core ASIC controller, which integrates embedded processors with a high speed multi-bus design to achieve performance far beyond legacy solid state designs.
  • Fastor Systems unveiled a NVMe compliant PCIe software defined storage device (SDS), or post-controller SSD, in which a de-coupled control & data plane together with a non-blocking fabric and message based architecture provide both high throughput and low latency to address the needs of today’s hyperscale datacenters.
  • Micron showcased a P420m PCIe SSD featuring multilevel (MLC) NAND technology.

Join the SSSI at Flash Memory Summit August 12-15 in Santa Clara CA!

Marty Foltyn Leave a comment

SSSI returns to the Flash Memory Summit in booth 808, featuring information on updates on new tests in the SNIA Solid State Storage Performance Test Specification-Enterprise 1.1, NVM programming, and Workload I/O Capture Program (WIOCP) activities; new tech notes and white papers, including a PTS User Guide Tech Note, a PCIe SSD 101 Whitepaper, and a Performance Primer Whitepaper; and PCIe SSD demonstrations from SSSI members Bitmicro, Fastor, and Micron.

flash memory summitAll current SSSI members attending FMS and individuals from companies interested in the SSSI and their activities are cordially invited to the SSSI Solid State Storage Reception Monday evening August 12 from 5:30 pm – 7:00 pm in Room 209-210 at the Santa Clara Convention Center.   At the reception, SSSI Education Chair Tom Coughlin of Coughlin Associates will provide an overview of the SSD market, and SSSI Chair Paul Wassenberg of Marvell will discuss SSD performance.  SSSI Vice Chair Walt Hubis of Fusion-io will discuss SSSI programs, including PTS, NVM Programming, Workload I/O Capture, and PCIe SSD.  Refreshments, table displays, and an opportunity drawing for SSDs provided by SSSI members Intel, Micron, and OCZ will be featured.

FMS conference activities begin August 13, and the agenda can be found here.  SSSI members speaking and chairing panels include:

Tuesday August 13

4:35 pm – Paul Wassenberg of Marvell on Standards

Wednesday August 14

8:30 am – Eden Kim and Easen Ho of Calypso Testers – PCIe Power Budgets, Performance, and Deployment

9:50 am – Eden Kim and Easen Ho of Calypso Testers –  SNIA Solid State Storage Performance Test Specification

3:10 pm – Walt Hubis of Fusion-io – Revolutionizing Application Development Using NVM Storage Software

3:10 pm – Easen Ho of Calypso Testers –  SSD Testing Challenges

4:30 pm – Paul von Behren of Intel –  SNIA Tutorial: SNIA NVM Programming Model:  Optimizing Software for Flash

Thursday August 15

3:10 pm – Jim Pappas of Intel – PCI Express and  Enterprise SSDs

3:10 pm – Jim Handy of Objective Analysis – Market Research

An open “Chat with the Experts” roundtable session Tuesday August 13 at 7:00 pm will feature Jim Pappas of Intel at a Standards table, Eden Kim of Calypso Testers at a SSD Performance table, Easen Ho of Calypso Testers at a Testing table, and Paul Wassenberg of Marvell at a SATA Express table.MESS - Final logo #2-Megan Archer

The Media Entertainment and Scientific Storage (MESS) will hold their August “Meetup” at the Open Chat with the Experts, and also be located in SSSI Booth 808 for further discussions.

Exhibit admission is complimentary until August 8.  SNIA and SSSI members and colleagues can receive a $100 discount on either the 3-day conference or the 1-day technical program using the code SNIA at www.flashmemorysummit.com.

 

PCI Express Coming to an SSD Near You

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There’s been a lot of press recently about what’s going on in the world of storage regarding the utilization of PCIe as a device interface.  Of course, PCIe has been around a long time as a system bus, while SATA and SAS have been used as storage device interfaces.  But with SSDs getting faster with every new product release, it’s become difficult for the traditional interfaces to keep up.

Some folks figure that PCIe is the solution to that problem.  PCIe 3.0 operates at 1GB/s, which is faster than 600MB/s SATA.  And with PCIe, it’s possible to add lanes to increase the overall bandwidth.  The SATA Express spec from SATA-IO defines a client PCIe device as having up to 2 lanes of PCIe, which brings the speed up to 2GB/s.  Enterprise SSDs will have up to 4 lanes of PCIe, which provides 4GB/s of bandwidth.

There was also some work on the software side that needed to be done to support PCIe devices, including NVM Express and SCSI Over PCIe (SOP), both of which are well underway.

If you are interested in knowing more about PCIe SSDs, keep an eye on our Education page, where, sometime during the week of August 5, we will be posting a new white paper on this topic.

New Performance Test Service Launched for Solid State Drives

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The SNIA Solid State Storage Initiative (SNIA SSSI) announces a testing service where interested parties may submit their SSD products for testing to the SSS Performance Test Specification.

Drive Requirements

Any mSATA, SATA, SAS and PCIe SSDs can be tested. The tested device must be recognized as a logical device by CentOS 6.3 and must support Purge (via Security Erase, Format Unit, or equivalent proprietary method of Purge).

Available Tests

Testing is based on the SSS PTS version 1.1.  Visit the SSS Performance Test Service page for more information on the tests.

Testing Process

Testing will be conducted by Calypso Systems, a certified SSS PTS testing facility.  Participants must submit two (2) samples of the SSD to be tested and provide prepaid return express shipment bills (FedEx, DHL or UPS). Testing will take approximately 3-4 weeks to complete.

Any failed test, or test that will not complete, will be tested twice and error logs will be provided.  All product test result data will be kept confidential.

Test results are provided in standard SNIA Report Format as specified in the SSS Performance Test Specification.

For more details, contact ptstest@snia.org

Client Performance Test Specification Released

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Today, SSSI released the Client PTS.  Client refers to a single user / few tasks environment, as opposed to Enterprise, which implies multiple users / many tasks.  What are the differences between the Client and Enterprise PTS?

The Enterprise PTS calls out a Write Saturation test, where the SSD is written to continuously over the entire drive capacity 4 times or for 24 hours, whichever comes first.  This test provides a good idea of the robustness of the drive in an enterprise environment. This test is not applicable to Client environments, and was not included in the Client PTS.

The other three main types of tests measure IOPS, throughput (MB/sec), and Latency (how quickly a drive responds to commands) and are included in both Enterprise and Client PTS.  Here the Client PTS differs in that that tests may be performed on smaller segments of the drive, not all of the portions of the drive being tested need to be preconditioned, and different types of test stimulus are applied. These changes were based on the testing of literally dozens of different SSDs, as well as data provided by manufacturers of client SSDs.

The Client and Enterprise PTS documents can be downloaded at www.snia.org/pts.

New Resource about SSD Standards is Now Available

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The SNIA SSSI site has a new page entitled Solid State Storage Standards Explained.   It provides an overview of standards on drivers, interfaces, connectors, form factors, security, and testing that must be considered when designing or evaluating an SSD.  There are links to each standards site to get further details. 

The page will be updated regularly and inputs are welcome.  Questions and comments may be sent to asksssi@snia.org.