High-Performance NVMe Storage with No Compromise Drive Failure Protection (DFP) and Extended Drive Life

Highlights

• Pairing Pliops Extreme Data Processor (XDP) PCIe card with Ultrastar® DC SN640 NVMe SSDs delivers up to 3x storage performance and enhanced efficiency.
• Optimizes SSD endurance with up to 6x increase in useful life for longer hardware refresh cycles.
• Up to 6x capacity savings – including higher usable capacity without performance limitation.
• Full performance NVMe RAID 5/6 data protection with up to 3x faster rebuilds.
• Up to 70% TCO reduction benefit.
• Ideal for data-intensive, performance-sensitive enterprise application workloads.
• The joint solution works with any server – with no changes to the application or special hardware.
• A single Pliops XDP supports up to 8 Ultrastar DC SN640 SSDs.

Applications

• RDBMS: MySQL, MariaDB, PostgreSQL, SQL Server,...
• NoSQL: MongoDB™, Cassandra®, Redis®,...
• Storage Software: Ceph, Gluster,...
• Analytics: Apache Spark™, Kafka,...

Benefits

• Proven enterprise-grade NVMe low latency storage.
• Higher reliability, efficiency and protection, at scale.
• Single solution across applications and use cases.
• Simple, flexible deployment; no changes required.
• Increased node-level reliability and uptime.

Challenges

Two key increasingly critical challenges are creating the need for an updated approach to building scalable, data-protected, high-performance storage infrastructure:

• How to support an increasing number of data-intensive application workloads with the need for consistently high performance.
• How to cost-effectively scale high-performance data storage infrastructure while providing data protection with faster drive rebuilds, more useable capacity, and longer useful drive life – especially with higher-capacity SSDs.

These challenges have led to the rise of new storage infrastructure requirements for organizations across all industries, especially where data growth volume is significant and data protection is critical.

Solution

The need for an affordable and manageable data storage solution that addresses these challenges has never been greater. A single Pliops XDP card seamlessly works with up to 8 Ultrastar DC SN640 NVMe SSDs, managing the data flow between the application and each SSD – enabling new efficiencies and cost savings across a broad set of applications and use cases at scale. The combined solution delivers accelerated performance, optimized drive endurance, greater usable capacity, and built-in no compromise RAID 5/6 style data protection with ultra-fast drive rebuilds.

Pliops Extreme Data Processor (XDP)

Just as GPUs overcome processing inefficiencies to accelerate AI and analytics performance, the Pliops Extreme Data Processor (XDP) overcomes storage inefficiencies to accelerate performance and dramatically lower infrastructure costs. Delivered on a low-profile PCIe card, XDP works with any server to multiply the scalability of workloads and data capacity by delivering ultra-high performance Drive Failure Protection (DFP) and inline compression for data-intensive NVMe SSD-based applications.

Using breakthrough data structures and algorithms, XDP improves how data is processed by managing the dataflow from applications to SSD storage, eliminating bottlenecks and latency that cost time and resources. The result is improved performance, reliability, capacity, and efficiency while freeing the host CPU to focus on other high-priority tasks.

No Compromise Drive Failure Protection for SSDs

Pliops XDP's integrated DFP provides full performance RAID 5/6 style protection up to 3x faster than software RAID 0 with ultra-fast rebuilds (up to 3x quicker than hardware RAID 5) while maintaining consistently high performance with <10% performance drop. In the event of a drive failure, recovery time is short with only minimal impact on applications and drive, server, and storage resources protecting customer SLAs by maintaining constant data availability with no data loss or downtime.

Optimize SSD Endurance with Capacity Savings

SSD endurance is increasingly important and especially for write-intensive applications. Pliops XDP optimizes SSD endurance by managing the dataflow between applications to SSDs, performing all writes sequentially and in consistent-size chunks. This dramatically reduces write amplification (as low as 1), significantly reducing SSD wear and optimizing endurance for up to 6x longer useful life.

XDP's integrated inline transparent compression and data reduction technology enables near 100% SSD capacity utilization and up to 6x space savings while providing full performance and DFP data protection. Both extended endurance and capacity savings significantly reduce the effective cost/TB for the life of the SSD.

Solution Testing

Solution testing was accomplished with a single Intel® Server System (M50CYP2UR208) configured with 2 x Gold 6346 CPUs (3.1GHz 16 cores each), 256 GiB for memory. 8 × 7.68 TB Ultrastar DC SN640 NVMe SSDs, and a single Pliops XDP card. The testing methodology focused on data performance in various workload scenarios, measuring Read and Write bandwidth (MB/s) for a range of block sizes (KB). A Linux® FIO benchmark tool was used to generate and manage all SSD I/O workloads.

Test Results

Results were baselined by testing the solution configuration using Software RAID 0 without Pliops XDP against the same setup with XDP and DFP enabled. Pliops XDP increased performance by more than 2x for most block sizes while providing much-needed redundancy for the storage array. The following graphs highlight the solution performance benefits.

Random Writes

A line graph showing Random Writes (MB/s) versus Block Size (KB). The Pliops XDP DFP line is consistently higher than the Software RAID 0 line across all block sizes, indicating higher performance.

Random Reads

A line graph showing Random Reads (MB/s) versus Block Size (KB). The Pliops XDP DFP line is consistently higher than the Software RAID 0 line across all block sizes, indicating higher performance.

70/30 Mixed Workloads

A line graph showing 70/30 Mixed Workloads (MB/s) versus Block Size (KB). The Pliops XDP DFP line is consistently higher than the Software RAID 0 line across all block sizes, indicating higher performance.

Learn more about Pliops XDP: https://pliops.com

Pliops XDP is listed in the Western Digital compatibility guide. https://www.westerndigital.com/support/tools/partner-product-compatibility

Western Digital

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San Jose, CA 95119, USA
www.westerndigital.com

©2022 Western Digital, the Western Digital design, the Western Digital logo, and Ultrastar are registered trademarks or trademarks of Western Digital Corporation or its affiliates in the US and/or other countries. Ceph is a trademark or registered trademark of Red Hat, Inc. or its subsidiaries in the United States and other countries. Linux® is the registered trademark of Linus Torvalds in the U.S. and other countries. Intel is a trademark of Intel Corporation or its subsidiaries in the U.S. and/or other countries. MongoDB is a trademark of MongoDB, Inc. MySQL is a registered trademark of Oracle and/or its affiliates. The NVMe word mark is a trademark of NVM Express, Inc. PostgreSQL is a registered trademark of PostgreSQL Global Development Group. Redis is a trademark of Redis Labs Ltd. Any rights therein are reserved to Redis Labs Ltd. SQL Server is either a registered trademark or trademark of Microsoft Corporation in the United States and/or other countries.