The SNIA Solid State Storage Initiative would like to thank everyone who attended our webcast: How To Be Part of the Real World Workload Revolution. If you haven’t seen it yet, you can view the on demand version here. You can find the slides here.
Eden Kim and Jim Fister led a discussion on the testmyworkload (TMW) tool and data repository, discussing how a collection of real-world workload data captures can revolutionize design and configuration of hardware, software and systems for the industry. A new SNIA white paper available in both English and Chinese authored by Eden Kim, with an introduction by Tom Coughlin of Coughlin Associates and Jim Handy of Objective Analysis, discusses how we can all benefit by sharing traces of our digital workloads through the SNIA SSSI Real-World Workload Capture program.
Video streaming is an easy-to-understand workload from the I/O perspective, right? It’s pretty obvious that it’s a workload heavy on long, streaming reads. The application can be modeled with a consistent read flow, and the software tests should be easy. However, an analysis of the real-world workload shows something very different. At the disk level, the reads turn out to be a rapid flow of 4k and 8k block reads from a solid-state-disk. Further, other processes on the system also add in a small amount of 4k and 8k writes in the midst of the reads. All of this impacts the application –and an SSD — which was likely heavily tested on the basis of long, streaming reads.
Understanding the real-world characteristics of a workload can be a significant advantage in the development of new hardware, new systems, and new applications. The SNIA Solid State Storage Initiative (SSSI) and SSSI member company Calypso Systems are providing an opportunity to build a repository of workloads for the industry to use for real-world testing, as outlined in a new SSSI white paper How to Be a Part of the Real-World Workload Revolution. This paper is also available in Chinese at the SSSI Knowledge Center White Papers page.
By going to the TestMyWorkload site, anyone can participate by providing a trace capture of an I/O workload that can be used by others to develop better products. The capture itself traces the block transfers, but does not capture actual data. Any workload replay would use representative blocks, so there are no concerns about data security or integrity from these captures.
The repository can be used by any participant to test hardware and software, and can help system vendors and users optimize configurations for the best performance based on real-world data. By participating in this effort, organizations and individuals can provide insight and gain from the knowledge of all the contributors.
Follow these three steps to be a part of the revolution today!
It’s exciting to see the recent formation of the Solid State Drive Special Interest Group (SIG) here in the SNIA Solid State Storage Initiative. After all, everyone appreciates the ability to totally geek out about the latest drive technology and software for file systems. Right? Hey, where’s everyone going? We have vacation pictures with the dog we stored that we want to show…
Solid state storage has long found its place with those seeking greater performance in systems, especially where smaller or more random block/file transfers are prevalent. Single-system opportunity with NVMe drives is broad, and pretty much unquestioned by those building systems for the modern IT environments. Cloud, likewise, has found use of the technology where single-node performance makes a broader deployment relevant.
There have been many efforts to build the case for solid state in networked storage. Where storage and computation combine — for instance in a large map/reduce application — there’s been significant advantage, especially in the area of sustained data reads. This has usually comes at a scalar cost, where additional systems are needed for capacity. Nonetheless, finding cases where non-volatile memory enhances infrastructure deployment for storage or analytics. Yes, analytics is infrastructure these days, deal with it.
Seemingly independent of the hardware trends, the development of new file systems has provided significant innovation. Notably, heavily parallel file systems have the ability to serve a variety of network users in specialized applications or appliances. Much of the work has focused on development of the software or base technology rather than delivering a broader view of either performance or applicability. Therefore, a paper such as this one on building a Lustre file system using NVMe drives is a welcome addition to the case for both solid state storage and revolutionary file systems that move from specific applications to more general availability.
The paper shows how to build a small (half-rack) cluster of storage to support the Lustre file system, and it also adds the Dell VFlex OS implemented as a software defined storage solution. This has the potential to take an HPC-focused product like Lustre and drive a broader market availability for a high-performance solution. The combination of read/write performance, easy adoption to the broad enterprise, and relatively small footprint shows new promise for innovation.
The opportunity for widespread delivery of solid state storage using NVMe and software innovation in the storage space is ready to move the datacenter to new and more ambitious levels.The SNIA 2019 Storage Developer Conference is currently open for submissions from storage professionals willing to share knowledge and experience. Innovative solutions such as this one are always welcome for consideration.
SNIA thanks and celebrates the many hardworking SNIA member volunteers whose technical work was awarded Best of Show at the recent Flash Memory Summit.
Jennifer Dietz and Eden Kim accept FMS award from Jay Kramer
SNIA won the FMS Most Innovative Flash Memory Technology Award, recognizing innovations that will change the way flash memory works and is used in products, for the SNIA Technical Position Real World Storage Workloads Performance Test Specification (RWSW PTS), developed by the SNIA Solid State Storage Technical Work Group (SSS TWG). “Real World Workloads are important for Data Center, IT, and Storage professionals,” said Eden Kim, Chair of the SSS TWG, and CEO of SNIA member company Calypso Systems “because real world workloads are very different from synthetic lab workloads and are key determinants in datacenter server and storage performance, optimization and qualification.” Eden and Jennifer Dietz of SNIA member company Intel and Co-Chair of the SNIA Solid State Storage Initiative Marketing Committee accepted the award from Jay Kramer of Flash Memory Summit.
Mark Carlson and Bill Martin accept award on behalf of SNIA from Jay Kramer
SNIA also won the FMS Best of Show Technology Innovation Award, recognizing that cloud and other large data centers typically prioritize their selection criteria for storage solutions as those that can achieve the highest possible performance while avoiding proprietary vendor lock-in. SNIA and EXTEN HyperDynamic™ NVMe over Fabrics high-performance storage software were recognized for creating an open storage management specification that works with EXTEN storage software for being the first in the industry to provide a solution based on SNIA Swordfish™ and DMTF Redfish® specifications. “We congratulate EXTEN Technologies for its innovation and well-deserved accolade,” said Don Deel, SNIA Storage Management Initiative Governing Board Chair. “By integrating SNIA Swordfish into its solution, EXTEN Technologies’ customers will benefit from a standards-based API that does not require learning the intricacies of storage infrastructure to handle day-to-day storage needs.” Accepting the award for SNIA at FMS were Mark Carlson of SNIA member company Toshiba Memory Systems and Bill Miller of SNIA member company Samsung Electronics, Co-Chairs of the SNIA Technical Council.
Congratulations to all the SNIA volunteers who participated in the development of these award-winning specifications.
SNIA Sessions at FMS Now Available for Viewing and Download
Also at Flash Memory Summit, SNIA work and volunteers were on display in sessions on persistent memory (PM), solid state storage, form factors, and testing. A two-day PM track featured talks on advances in PM, PM hardware, PM software and applications, and remote persistent memory (PMEM-101-1; PMEM -102-1; PMEM-201-1; and PMEM-202-1).
SNIA is now partnering with the Enterprise and Datacenter SSD Form Factor Working Group (EDSFF) on form factors and a Wednesday session outlined their advances (SSD-201-1). SNIA also presented a preconference seminar (G) on bringing your SSD testing up to date, and a SNIA Education afternoon with sessions on flash storage, programming and networking, buffers, queues, and caches; and a BoF on PM futures. Check out all these sessions and more on the Flash Memory Summit proceedings page.
SNIA Executive Director Michael Oros shared SNIA strategic directions and areas of focus in a FMS main stage presentation, available here.
SNIA also presented updates on their work in Persistent Memory, Solid State Storage, and alliances at a well-attended reception on Monday evening. The SSSI honored Doug Voigt, co-chair of the NVM Programming Technical Work Group, for his contributions to SNIA and the NVM Programming Model.
We continued our discussions on the exhibit floor featuring JEDEC-compliant NVDIMM-Ns from SNIA Persistent Memory and NVDIMM SIG members AgigA Tech, Micron, Netlist, SMART Modular Technologies, and Viking in a Supermicro box running an open source performance demonstration. If you missed it, the SIG will showcase a similar demonstration at the upcoming SNIA Storage Developer Conference September 24-27, 2018, and the SNIA Persistent Memory Summit January 24, 2019 at the Hyatt Santa Clara. Register now for both events!
by Arthur Sainio, SNIA NVDIMM SIG Co-Chair, SMART Modular
SNIA’s Non-Volatile DIMM (NVDIMM) Special Interest Group (SIG) had a tremendous response to their most recent webcast: NVDIMM: Applications are
Here! You can view the webcast on demand.
Viewers had many questions during the webcast. In this blog, the NVDIMM SIG answers those questions and shares the SIG’s knowledge of NVDIMM technology. Read More
New on the Solid State Storage website is a whitepaper from analysts Tom Coughlin of Coughlin Associates and Jim Handy of Objective Analysis which details what IT manager requirements are for storage performance.The paper examines how requirements have changed over a four-year period for a range of applications, including databases, online transaction processing, cloud and storage services, and scientific and engineering computing. Users disclose how many IOPS are needed, how much storage capacity is required, and what system bottlenecks prevent them for getting the performance they need. Read More
Persistent memory discussions are capturing the minds of SNIA members and colleagues. At last month’s SNIA Storage Developer Conference, NVM (non-volatile memory) and NVMe sessions were standing-room-only, and opinion sharing continued into animated hallway discussions. I encourage you to check out the many presentations on the SNIA SDC website, and to download the live recordings of the keynotes here.
SNIA continued their education on persistent memory at this week’s Memcon in Santa Clara CA. SNIA’s booth was packed with attendees asking questions like what is the difference between the different kinds of NVDIMMs (you’ll want to check out our new snia_nvdimm_infographic), and is NVDIMM a standard (indeed, it is, JEDEC just released the DDR4 NVDIMM-N Design Standard Revision 1.0 last month, and you can download the link from our website). Read More
SNIA and the Solid State Storage Initiative (SSSI) invite you to join them at Flash Memory Summit 2016, August 8-11 at the Santa Clara Convention Center. SNIA members and colleagues receive $100 off any conference package using the code “SNIA16” by August 4 when registering for Flash Memory Summit at http://www.flashmemorysummit.com
On Monday, August 8, from 1:00pm – 5:00pm, a SNIA Education Afternoon will be open to the public in SCCC Room 203/204, where attendees can learn about multiple storage-related topics with five SNIA Tutorials on flash storage, combined service infrastructures, VDBench, stored-data encryption, and Non-Volatile DIMM (NVDIMM) integration from SNIA member speakers. Read More
The recent NVDIMM webcasts on the SNIA BrightTALK Channel sparked many questions from the almost 1,000 viewers who have watched it live or downloaded the on-demand cast. Now, NVDIMM SIG Chairs Arthur Sainio and Jeff Chang answer 35 of them in this blog. Did you miss the live broadcasts? No worries, you can view NVDIMM and other webcasts on the SNIA webcast channel https://www.brighttalk.com/channel/663/snia-webcasts.
FUTURES QUESTIONS
What timeframe do you see server hardware, OS, and applications readily adopting/supporting/recognizing NVDIMMs?
If you are in Silicon Valley or the Bay Area this week, SNIA welcomes you to join them and the Solid State Storage Initiative April 13-14 at the Santa Clara Convention Center for Open Server Summit 2016, the industry’s premier event that focuses on the design of next- generation servers with topics on data center efficiency, SSDs, core OS, cloud server design, the future of open server and open storage, and other efforts toward combining industry-standard hardware with open-source software.
The SNIA NVDIMM Special Interest Group is featured at OSS 2016, and will host a panel Thursday April 14 on NVDIMM technology, moderated by Bill Gervasi of JEDEC and featuring SIG members Diablo Technology, Netlist, and SMART Modular. The panel will highlight the latest activities in the three “flavors” of NVDIMM , and offer a perspective on the future of persistent memory in systems. Also, SNIA board member Rob Peglar of Micron Technology will deliver a keynote on April 14, discussing how new persistent memory directions create new approaches for system architects and enable entirely new applications involving enormous data sets and real-time analysis.
SSSI will also be in booth 403 featuring demonstrations by the NVDIMM SIG, discussions on SSD data recovery and erase, and updates on solid state storage performance testing. SNIA members and colleagues can register for $100 off using the code SNIA at http://www.openserversummit.com.
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The opportunity for widespread delivery of solid state storage using NVMe and software innovation in the storage space is ready to move the datacenter to new and more ambitious levels.
