SNIA Europe


COMMENT Focus is on


Welcome to the new 2011 SNIA Europe column. Our plan this year is to provide SNS Europe readers with a variety of topics and various authors from the SNIA Europe Board and Leadership team. We hope you will enjoy this new format. As 2011 starts, there’s a definite interest in moving the use of solid-state devices to the next level, and improving the value that can be achieved by them. Although no one has a crystal ball for this, I think storage tiering will be a topic high on this year’s agenda. Simply put, the investment in new storage technologies like solid state disks (SSD) and the extensive use of flash storage cache technologies will need to be applied to a wider set of use-cases than, for instance, employing them solely for a single specific application such as a low-latency and high bandwidth database.


Although solid state costs have fallen considerably in the last few years, extending the benefits to a wider class of workloads will require sophisticated tiering processes. They will permit active and “hot” data to occupy the most expensive but fastest teir of solid state storage, while maintaining inactive and “cold” data on slow-speed but inexpensive traditional disks. This issue is focused on Storage Tiering, so I decided to ask the SNIA Europe experts questions about storage tiering, and wanted to share their answers with you.


EDITOR


Philip Alsop T: +44 (0)1380 728101 F: +44 (0)1380 728101 E: pa@angelbcl.co.uk


EDITORIAL BOARD (SNIA EUROPE VOULENTEERS)


PEDITORIAL BOARD (SNIA EUROPE VOLUNTEERS) Bob Plumridge (Chairman), Malte Rademacher, Denise Ridolfo, Daniel Sazbon, Gilles Chekroun, Aad Dekkers, Mike Murphy, Thomas Pavel, Marcus Schneider, Chris Sopp


SALES MANAGER


John Owen T: +44 (0)1923 690203 E: jo@angelbcl.co.uk


MARKETING EXECUTIVE


Franziska Priebe T: +44 (0)1923 690202 E: fp@angelbcl.co.uk


DESIGN MANAGER


Mitchell Gaynor T: +44 (0)1923 690214 E: mg@angelbcl.co.uk


4 www.snia-europe.org


SSDs and tiering


DENISE RIDOLFO SNIA Europe Executive Board and Marketing Chair, NetApp


What exactly is Storage tiering and why is it important? Storage devices come in a range between two extreme types; fast, scarce & expensive and slow, plentiful & cheap. Tiering is the process of getting data you are using (hot data) on the fast, scarce and expensive stuff, and keeping data you don’t reference on slow, plentiful & cheap. The trick is the balance of requirements for speed of access to, and the cost of storing, the data. The hierarchy for cost and speed is from most costly, fast & smallest to cheapest, slow & biggest); SSDs, FC drives/ SAS drives and SATA drives.It is important to balance of cost & efficiency vs performance. If fast solid state was plentiful and cheap, we wouldn’t need tiering.


Is Storage Tiering only related to Solid State? No, but it tends to be of more importance when you have solid state due to the very high cost per GB. Most tiering operates on 3 disk tiers; SSD, FC (or SAS) and SATA. Solid state cache tends to operate on 2; normally solid state cache and SATA, sometimes SS cache and FC (or SAS). Other combinations like 2 tier FC and SATA are possible and sometimes seen, but the data movement costs often outweigh the benefits of moving the data to the right tier.


What do you think? DIRECTOR OF LOGISTICS


Sharon Cowley T: +44 (0)1923 690200 E: sc@angelbcl.co.uk


CIRCULATION & SUBSCRIPTIONS ASSISTANT


Annette Weatherilt T: +44 (0)1923 690200 E: aw@angelbcl.co.uk


PUBLISHER


Haroon Malik T: +44 (0)1923 690206 E: hm@angelbcl.co.uk


DIRECTORS


Bill Dunlop Uprichard – CEO Stephen Whitehurst – COO Jan Smoothy – CFO


Haroon Malik, Jackie Cannon, Scott Adams, Sharon Cowley, Sukhi Bhadal


PUBLISHED BY


Angel Business Communications Ltd Hannay House, 39 Clarendon Road, Watford, Herts, WD17 1JA. UK T: +44 (0)1923 690200 F: +44 (0)1923 690201 E: snseurope@angelbcl.co.uk


Storage Networking Solutions Europe is published seven times a year on a controlled circulation basis in Europe, Middle East and Africa only. Non-qualifying individuals subscribe at £60.00/e95.00pa (UK/Europe), £90.00 Rest of the World (Air mail), US$135.00pa (USA). Cover price £4.50.


Printed by: Pensord Press. ©2011 Angel Business Communications Ltd. ISSN 1477-3864(Print) ISSN 2041-1340(Online)


All information herein is believed to be correct at time of going to press. The publisher does not accept responsibility for any errors and omissions. The views expressed in this publication are not necessarily those of the publisher.


Every effort has been made to obtain copyright permission for the material contained in this publication. Angel Business Communications Ltd will be happy to acknowledge any copyright oversights in a


subsequent issue of the publication. Angel Business Communications Ltd © Copyright 2011.


All rights reserved. Contents may not be reproduced in whole or part without the written consent of the publishers.


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Regularly updated Storage Networking news, white papers, case studies and industry initiatives can be found at the SNS Europe website: www.snseurope.com SNS Europe is the only publication to be endorsed by


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