System x® and BladeCenter®

© 2010 IBM Corporation 1

1. To replace spinning boot disks to improve application performance, power

consumption, reliability, etc. � Boot disks – Low cost SSD - better reliability, good read performance� High performance databases, web/e-Mail servers – High performance SSDs can replace many HDDs� Note: All Flash/SSD is not created equal! Consumer flash technology (USB memory sticks, MP3s) is

cheap but lacks enterprise class durability, reliability, data protection – write cache protection, wear data leveling, etc.

2. To replace spinning disks in High IOPs storage systems for improved

performance of high transaction applications � Each SSD can deliver the same IOPs performance as dozens of traditional spinning disks� Reduction in storage acquisition cost and lower ongoing power & cooling cost � Improved application performance for local database and IOPs constrained environments

3. As a fast virtual memory paging device to reduce need for expensive main

memory DIMMs� Possible reduction in server acquisition costs and lowering ongoing power and cooling costs.� Big reduction in server cost with small reduction in application performance. Results are

application/workload dependent

More usages will come as enterprise SSDs continue to improve in price and performance…

Key uses for SSDs in servers today

IBM Modular and Blade Systems

2 © 2010 IBM Corporation

IBM 50GB High IOPS SSD for System x Servers and Blades

� High IO Performance

– Up to 8X IOPS more than HDD

– Media streaming, surveillance, file copy, logging, backup/recovery, business intelligence apps

� Lower cost IOPS Performance than HDD– Lower $/IOPS, less power and smaller footprint

required to reach performance target

� Superior Uptime– 3X the availability of mechanical drives with

RAID-1 – no moving parts to fail

– Enterprise wear leveling to extend life even further

� Flexible Deployment With Full OS Support

– Traditional HDD form factor offering

– Supported in servers or EXP3000 disk enclosures

3850-M2 & 3950-M2

HS22, 3550-M2, x3650-M2

HS21XM, LS22, LS42

EXP3000 with MR10M

Support

43W7706IBM 50GB SATA 2.5" SFF NHS High IOPS SSD

43W7714IBM 50GB SATA 2.5" SFF Slim-HS High IOPS SSD

43W7722IBM 50GB SATA 2.5" SFF HS High IOPS SSD

43W7698IBM 50GB SATA 3.5" HS High IOPS SSD

Part NumberName

IBM High IOPS SSD

50GB SATA 2.5" Slim HS High IOPS SSD

Available today

4K Multi-Threaded Random Read/Write Workload

(67% Read, 33% Writes, 100% Random)

291 372

41

2600

0

500

1000

1500

2000

2500

3000

4K

Transfer Size (bytes)

IOp

s

146GB SAS Drive Savio 10K.2 (FW B522) 73GB SAS Drive Savio 15K.2 (FW B612)

32GB SATA Flash SSD 50GB MACH8 IOPS SSD

IBM Modular and Blade Systems

3 © 2010 IBM Corporation

High Performance SSDs for DS5000/8000 & SVC

� STEC Zeus-IOPS FC & SAS SSDs

– 73, 146, 300, and 600GB capacities

– Recognized leader for external storage

– Meets IBM’s enterprise drive requirements

� SSD benefits

– Increased small-block I/O performance – up to 80000 IOPs each

– Up to 350MB/s for streaming applications

– Lower power usage – up to 80% decrease

– Dramatic reduction in system space for equivalent I/O

System x® and BladeCenter®

© 2010 IBM Corporation 4

High IOPS SSD PCIe Adapters

� Based on fast growing NAND flash technology

� Standard PCIe form factor supports rack/tower servers and blades (via PEU/BPE3)

� Available in 160GB and 320GB capacities (640GB coming soon)

� Typically higher IOPs and MB/s performance than SATA/SAS/FC attached SSDs

�Must be mirrored via software to provide data protection against an adapter failure

� Typically lowest cost per IOP vs. traditional SSDs

Superior solution to enterprise disk drives for applications sustaining high operations per second – e.g. database, data warehouse, stream analytics

635 MBps492 MBps32K Write

754 MBps744 MBps32K Read

128,509 IOPS108,031 IOPS4K Read

160GB SLC sequential

(IBM measured)

160GB SLC random

(IBM measured)

System x® and BladeCenter®

© 2010 IBM Corporation 5

Comparing SSD form factor – disk drive vs. PCI-E

PCIe adapter: � Adapter looks like a single disk to

the OS and application.

� Can provide higher IOPs than SSD due to higher bandwidth of PCIe vs. SAS, SATA, and FC

� Mirror 2 adapters using software for fault tolerance - can be costly

� Direct sharing of the adapter/data by >1 server typically not possible.

Disk drive:

�Low cost SSDs are good for boot -can exceed HDD performance on reads, though slow on writes

�High performance SSDs are 100-1000x faster in random workloads than HDDs, but cost 10-100x more per GB

�Can be used like HDDs in RAID arrays for fault tolerance and/or data sharing

�RAID adapters/controllers can limit performance when many SSDs are used per adapter