EBOOK

TRUE OR FALSE: DEBUNKING THE TOP FLASH STORAGE MYTHS

A Note About Myths Versus Truth

It has been said, “Truth is universal. However, the perception of truth often varies.” In many cases, a kernel of truth can transform into myth as it is passed down from one or more “reliable” sources until the end statement differs so much from the original as to be nearly unrecognizable. Yet, because that fuzzy end statement seems like it could be true, it is sometimes mistaken for fact.

The real truth, in contrast, separates fact from hearsay. Along the way, it corrects inaccurate assumptions with objective and verifiable information.

Whether you manage flash storage directly or work closely with people who do, we think you’ll find the following short list of myths to be a good way to get to the real truth about flash storage.

Diogenes looking for an honest man2

Myth #1: Flash Is a New Way to Store DataThe Truth: Flash is a new and faster medium for storing data, but it is not a new way to store data. Data stored on flash still needs to be managed and protected, just as it has always been. This includes protection against failed devices, protection against data corruption (intentional and accidental), and facilities for disaster recovery. In the early days of flash adoption, customers were willing to sacrifice basic data management features for the sake of speed, but this is no longer the case. As flash storage has matured, the need for enterprise data management features has become a requirement.

Myth #2: Flash Storage Is Better Suited for Data Centers than for Public CloudsThe Truth: Many all-flash storage solutions are designed with clouds in mind. For instance, NetApp® SolidFire® all-flash storage supports large-scale public or private cloud infrastructures. Compatible with popular cloud orchestration solutions, SolidFire was designed from the ground up to handle the scale, performance, and management requirements of a large-scale cloud infrastructure.

Another example of cloud-ready flash storage is NetApp ONTAP®, where customers can unify and simplify their data management across flash, disk, and cloud resources with common management tools for blocks, files, and objects, providing the foundation of an underlying data fabric.

3

4

Myth #3: Flash Storage Is Too Expensive for My BudgetThe Truth: In the early days of enterprise flash, high costs per gigabyte usually meant that only a few carefully chosen workloads with ultrahigh-performance needs could justify the added cost of flash. Flash technology has since matured, and flash costs have decreased significantly. The use of enhanced data reduction technology has also caused flash storage efficiency to increase. Thanks to these factors, yesterday’s boundary-pushing performance is no longer out of reach for organizations wanting to use flash storage to help them consolidate their current workloads.

Figure 1) Flash moves towards price parity with HDD

Myth #4: Flash Storage Should Be Used Only on High-Performance WorkloadsThe Truth: Today’s enterprise must be fast, global, mobile, social, digital, and on demand all the time. These simultaneous needs now require business as usual to operate more in the realm of high performance. Many next-generation workloads will benefit from the high performance and low latency of flash storage. Whether an organization needs to generate greater customer insight and engagement, create new business models, or support an increasingly mobile workforce, the high performance and low latency of flash storage are well suited to support such fundamental business priorities.

Myth #5: SSDs Wear out More Quickly than HDDsThe Truth: Enterprise flash drives have impressive reliability. Unlike HDDs, flash drives have no spinning disk or moving parts, increasing their reliability. Also, advanced flash technologies have evolved to significantly increase flash lifespan by grouping (and minimizing) the overall number of program/erase cycles made to flash storage cells.

Figure 2) SSD reliability by flash model

Of note is a recent report from the Usenix FAST’16 conference, which analyzed SSD reliability within Google’s data centers over an extended period. The report concluded that during the first four years in operation, Google experienced a lower field failure rate for SSDs (as low as 0.95% per year) than it had experienced with HDDs (typically 2% to 9% per year).

Source: https://www.usenix.org/conference/fast16/technical-sessions/presentation/schroeder

5

Myth #6: Flash Storage Is Flash Storage — It’s All the SameThe Truth: Some application environments have different flash storage needs than other application environments. One might require the highest possible performance, while another might need robust data management that’s more focused on application uptime and fault recovery. Still other application environments may have erratic, unpredictable growth and require the convenience of scaling out quickly. Whichever scenario, NetApp offers a flash solution tailored to application needs:

• For those needing the utmost performance with sustained low latency, the top-performing EF-Series all-flash storage is highly recommended.

• For those needing workload consolidation with enterprise application management functionality, NetApp AFF all-flash storage meets these needs with rich data management features that make sure of continuous operation, high performance, and guaranteed efficiency.

• For those needing a next-generation, flash-optimized storage platform built around a webscale architecture, NetApp SolidFire all-flash storage provides guaranteed quality of service for multiple workloads.

Myth #7: Flash Storage Devices Have a Large Amount of Wasted SpaceThe Truth: It takes a lot of faith for a vendor to guarantee certain levels of space savings. Yet that’s exactly what NetApp keeps doing. In fact, we believe so strongly you’ll get more efficiency from NetApp ONTAP flash storage that we guarantee a 4:1 reduction in capacity.

How do we make sure that ONTAP is space efficient? We use multiple efficiency techniques, including inline deduplication and compression, Snapshot® copies, virtual clones, and thin provisioning. With the release of ONTAP 9, we’ve upped the efficiency stakes again to include inline data compaction, a powerful new efficiency feature that packs even more data into flash-based storage devices.

6

Myth #8: Flash Storage Is Always Blazingly Fast The Truth: Using flash storage does not automatically make sure that applications will run 10x, 5x, or even 2x more quickly than traditional storage systems. This is especially true for large flash storage systems that must deal with extensive metadata to provide for inline data reduction, wear leveling, and garbage collection. This is why you often see all-flash storage systems use low-capacity flash devices.

NetApp flash systems, in contrast, were designed for sustained high performance. A NetApp EF-Series system, for instance,

was benchmarked by the Storage Performance Council (SPC) at well over 300K IOPS with record-setting latencies as low as 170 microseconds.

NetApp ONTAP all-flash scale-out storage solutions have long been leaders in performance. In 2015, an eight-node ONTAP flash cluster was benchmarked by SPC at over 685K IOPS with submillisecond latencies. To further substantiate the ability to maintain high performance at scale, the NetApp AFF was the first enterprise flash storage system to support 15TB SSDs, with a mind-bending 1PB effective capacity in a 2U storage shelf (including inline data reduction).

Predictable performance is also a vital capability of next-generation data centers. Until you have control over performance, your data center cannot make sure of predictability for multiworkload environments. Only SolidFire guarantees performance to every workload with true storage quality of service. With SolidFire, data centers have complete, independent control of performance and capacity, which are presented as independent resource pools. That means each storage volume within a SolidFire system can be allocated an exact amount of capacity and performance, both of which can be changed spontaneously without the need to migrate data or affect operations.Figure 3) NetApp AFF performance in Oracle database environments

7

Myth #9: Flash Storage Is Too Complicated for Most Users to Operate CorrectlyThe Truth: Getting the most out of flash storage can be tricky. Incorrectly sized LUNs, misconfigured VMs, and improperly placed applications can wreak havoc on shared flash storage systems. Fortunately, NetApp ONTAP all-flash systems can be factory-shipped and automatically preconfigured with best practice configurations for many common applications, such as those based on Oracle, Microsoft SQL Server, VDI, and VMware. In under 10 minutes, these systems can be deployed and serving data.

In addition, the SolidFire true scale-out architecture delivers simplicity through its flexible, independent scalability. Customers expand SolidFire storage clusters by simply adding new nodes, instantly expanding the capacity and performance of the flash storage system with automatic rebalancing of data across the cluster.

8

SummaryFlash storage technologies are moving quickly. The old myths no longer apply. In order to maximize your use of flash storage in powering enterprise applications, you’ll need to keep pace as well. Bookmark the following links to stay up-to-date with the latest flash storage developments:

• NetApp all-flash storage

• Tech OnTap® newsletter

• SolidFire blog

• NetApp technology blog

9

© 2016 NetApp, Inc. All rights reserved. No portions of this document may be reproduced without prior written consent of NetApp, Inc. Specifications are subject to change without notice. NetApp, the NetApp logo, ONTAP, Snapshot, SolidFire, and Tech OnTap are trademarks or registered trademarks of NetApp Inc., in the United States and/or other countries. All other brands or products are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective holders and should be treated as such. A current list of NetApp trademarks is available on the web at http://www.netapp.com/us/legal/netapptmlist.aspx. NA-237-0716