SPEED UP NETWORK STORAGE PERFORMANCE WITH LITEON TRUE SPEED TECHNOLOGY 1
Contents Introduction... Migrating from Hard Disk Drive to Solid State Disk... It s all in the IOPS... Liteon True Speed... Reliable Flash Memory... Server Class Controller... Instant Restore... Conclusion... Contact Information... 2
Introduction Solid State Drives uses the industry standard NAND Flash memory as the storage medium, as a replacement for traditional rotating disks. Although this is not a new idea, while the consumer electronics has been using Flash memory in the past, the memory capacity of these NAND Flash has increase recently, while the cost has continue to decrease. With the migration of multiple file and data server, into Cloud Storage, Solid State Drives is playing a key role in this migration. Liteon True Speed is a revolutionary way to speed up the performance and speed of the solid state drive, in comparison to all other solid state drive. Migrating from Hard Disk Drive to Solid State Disk Hard disk drive had evolved from few hundred megabytes to a couple of terabytes, while the capacity has increased; the speed of the hard disk has not evolved that much, it remains the same since then. Enterprise class hard disk drive did have a higher spindle speed, what the speed compensate, the capacities trade off. Recent development in solid state memories like NAND Flash, have slowly replace enterprise class hard disk in primary operations, solid state disk memory capacity have increase in par with enterprise class hard disk, the cost continue to drop to almost a dollar a gigabyte, while the speed continue to increase. It s all in the IOPS Enterprise class storage relies on reliability and speed, as it handle enormous data from various source, and store these in a network location, the ability of the storage device to maintain a reliable operation without data loss is the primary concern, whilst the speed is require due to high volume of data traffic being written and read, all at the same time. Metrics used in determining a reliable hard drive in such environment are measures in IOPS or Input Output per second. Solid state disk for one does not have rotational speed or spindle speed, as it does not employ any servo mechanical parts to operates, this also improves the latency time as well due to non mechanical operations. Therefore when solid state drive is employ in a network storage configuration, whether it s a primary drive or as a cache, the overall IOPS are far better than hard disk drive. Typical solid state drive run 3
up to 480 IOPS compare to less than 200 IOPS for servo mechanical hard disk. Liteon True Speed Most of the solid state drive today in the market, measure their drive performance in the number of IOPS, yet the hidden factor is, this IOPS are all measure in sequential write speed, in an applied environment, the data being written, read and delete are continuously perform, therefore when a solid state drive is in use for a period of time, there is a significant degradation in performance, as the write process is no longer in a sequential sequence, but rather in a random write process. 350 300 250 200 150 100 Random Liner1 (0 Fill) Liner2 (1 Fill) 50 0 LITEON M3S Brand O S series Brand O MaxIOPS Brand K H Series Brand P W series Figure 1 Random Write, Non 0/1 Test Liteon True Speed employs a revolutionary way of increasing the performance of the solid state drive, by achieving same IOPS in random write with the sequential write, not only it makes the entire drive operation faster after prolong use, it also makes the operation consistent and stable. 300 250 200 150 100 Dirty Clean 50 0 LITEON M3S Brand O MaxIOPS Brand K H series Figure 2 Random Write, Clean vs. Dirty Test 4
Therefore once a solid state drive is in prolong use, or the so called dirty drive, the performance of the random write significantly compare to a new or clean drive. Instant Restore When a solid state disk are being used, garbage collection process eliminates the needs to perform erasure of the whole block before any write process begin, what most solid state disk do is accumulate the data that are marked for erasure, tag this as Garbage, then perform the whole block of erasure. Liteon True Speed deploys an instant restore process, this is a real time process done during the solid state disk process, data that are mark for erasure are still tag as Garbage, instead of waiting for a block erasure, Liteon solid state disk erase the garbage and prepare the block for next write cycle. Server Class Controller Liteon solid state disk is design for enterprise class use, it employs a server class controller developed by Marvell Technology, it provide an accelerate hardware performance to reduce overhead. Enterprise class storage requires a higher throughput, round the clock operation, data integrity and reliability, downtime and data loss is not even allowed even on thoughts. Liteon shows commitment of the product for a tough environment operation. Reliable Flash Memory Liteon solid state disk uses only reliable component, its solid state disk uses the latest Toshiba Toggle NAND Flash. Toggle Flash NAND is the next generation NAND Flash designed to maximize performance. Design for server class environment that require high performance NAND. Benefits in employing Toggle Flash are; higher performance, it support 133Mbps transfer or more it consume less power as it does not use clock 5
Conclusion For a reliable enterprise class storage solutions, Liteon out perform its competitor, both in performance and reliability. True Speed guarantees high speed write both in sequential and random, real time instant restore assure and prepare the Liteon solid state disk ready for next write cycle. Reliable components from reliable partners like Toshiba, allows enterprise users a total cost ownership, a next generation solution that will be not become obsolete soon. Finally Marvell server class controller shows Liteon commitment in enterprise class solutions, delivering a robust and reliable product. Contact Information Philips-LiteOn Digital Solutions Netherlands B.V. Hoevenweg 13 5652 AW Eindhoven The Netherlands Website: www.liteon.eu Telephone: +31 (0)40-250-80-62 6