Australian flash resellers discuss their solid state secrets

Magna Systems and Engineering

Vendor: Oracle

Oracle, best-known for its database software, also sells storage based on the technology that it acquired in the Sun Microsystems acquisition. It has packaged the Solaris operating system and the ZFS filesystem architecture into
the ZFS-3 and ZFS-4 hybrid storage appliances (there’s also
a ZFS backup appliance).

These systems make heavy use of DRAM and flash as a caching layer and the ZFS file system is highly tunable for specialised workloads.

Dave Demmocks, sales director ANZ for Sydney’s Magna Systems and Engineering, likes the ZFS system for his broadcast media customers. Magna is a specialist supplier to the broadcast film and television industry, which deals with very large data files as a matter of course.

“The way [a video] editing application works, you load a file and you get to an edit point,” Demmock says. “Typically you’ll load 20 or 30 frames either side of the edit point, then you’ll rock ’n’ roll between them, choose your edit then move on through the file. The architecture of this box lends itself to that really well.”

The large data files and sequential access pattern also benefits from a much larger block size than those possible with other solutions. “I can set the block size on a file system at a megabyte,” Demmocks says, “where for most workloads that would be crazy”.

Having to deal with large media files is only going to increase as formats such as 4k video become more common and as broadcast moves to IP networks.

“We’re looking at the demise of the BNC plug,” Demmock says. “We are just on the cusp of when everything can be done reliably on an IP network.” Streaming media over IP networks is the way of the future and all that video has to be stored somewhere, so growth in this area looks assured.

What happened to Violin Memory?

Violin Memory was one of the first all-flash storage vendors on the market and the first to IPO, in 2013. Sadly, things haven’t gone so well for the company since, with several shifts in focus and its stock dropping from $30 to under $3 a share at time of writing.

Violin has stayed true to its all-flash roots, concentrating on extremely low-latency performance systems that use its proprietary flash modules rather than commodity SSDs.

Violin doesn’t have much presence in Australia and, again sadly, CRN can’t see a compelling reason to look at it unless you have extreme performance needs. Even then, there’s a risk the company won’t be around to look after you in a year or so unless there are some dramatic changes ahead for it.

All-flash or hybrid?

Should you go for an all-flash solution, or is hybrid a better choice? Well, as you might have guessed, it depends.

An all-flash system will be super-fast all the time. You’ll get consistent low latency and better throughput than a traditional spinning-disk system, particularly for random I/O. An all-flash array will also take up a lot less space than a spinning disk system – think 50 terabytes in 3 RU instead of a full rack or two – it will consume a lot less power and won’t be as hot.

But you’ll pay through the nose for all that speed. Raw flash prices are dropping fast as foundries churn out ever-higher density chips and get economies of scale, but flash is still more expensive than spinning disk for the same capacity.

A hybrid system trieds to provide the best of both worlds: flash for performance and spinning disk for capacity, working together to give you speed and space. For a large number of customers the flash layer is more than enough to contain the active working set, while colder data can live on the cheaper storage, bringing the overall cost per IOPS or GB down. The risk is that your active working set regularly exceeds the flash layer capacity and the system has to regularly fetch data from the slower-spinning disk layer, making latency longer and less predictable. The algorithms and powerful CPUs used in modern systems are much better than you might have seen in older systems, so don’t let poor experiences cloud your judgement here.

If you have a smaller amount of data that needs to absolutely scream, all-flash is a good choice. If you need a lot of space but want some speed benefits, hybrid is the go. If you’re not sure, an all-flash array will give you insurance against not knowing your workload – but you risk overspending for the sake of avoiding doing some homework. Get some independent advice from a consultant or system integrator who can help you determine which is the right choice for you.