X-IO Technologies
All Flash Arrays – Saviour of the storage world ?
October 2013
Jim Litke
Principal Systems Engineer
X-IO
State of the Market
X-IO Technologies – Confidential
Lots of Hype in the Marketplace
X-IO Technologies – Confidential
One Size does not fit all use cases
All HDD Arrays
SATA
C
Increasing Capacity
GB/$
Hybrid Arrays
Traditional
RAID
All Flash Arrays
Performance
IOPS/$
Increasing Performance
4
X-IO Technologies – Confidential
What does the market think ?
http://whitepapers.theregister.co.uk/paper/view/2870/ukxio-wp-allflashvshybridstorageresearch-130618-final.pdf
X-IO Technologies – Confidential
Market Clarity
How clear are you about the benefits offered by flash-only arrays vs.
traditional HDD arrays?
80%
70%
60%
50%
40%
30%
20%
10%
0%
Total
Very unclear
1001-3000
employees
More than 3000 Financial services
employees
Quite unclear
Quite clear
Manufacturing
Very clear
Retail,
Other commercial
distribution and
sector
transport
There are no benefits
Source: Vanson Bourne Market Survey for X-IO, 2013
X-IO Technologies – Confidential
Seven Deadly Myths
Myth #1: HDD-based arrays are history – the future is allflash
Which of the following is the most
ideal storage solution for your
business?
Mix of hard disk & enterprise grade
flash with real-time tiering of data
1%
All hard disk based, with SSD cache
1 2%
44%
1 4%
29%
All flash based, enterprise grade
All hard disk based
All flash based, consumer grade
Level of belief: Low
Reality: Myth – Users clearly favor a “right tool for the
job” approach
X-IO Technologies – Confidential
Seven Deadly Myths
Myth #2: All-flash is faster than hybrid storage
• 76% believe all-flash is faster
• Flash can lower latency for random
reads
• Sequential writes is another story
• Must evaluate real-world workloads
rather than marketing benchmarks
Level of belief: High
Reality: Myth - Different media types provide
varying benefits
X-IO Technologies – Confidential
Seven Deadly Myths
Myth #3: All-flash always runs cooler and
requires less power than hybrid storage
• 75% believe this perception
• Flash modules/SSD’s draw less
power as raw components
• Storage arrays are not just raw
storage
• CPU’s, cache memory, etc are
required
Level of belief: High
Reality: Myth – Real life customer tests have
proven this
X-IO Technologies – Confidential
Seven Deadly Myths
Myth #4: All-flash is more reliable than hybrid storage
• 40% agree. Not majority, but significant
• Due in large part to proliferation of SATA in enterprise
arrays
• Cell failure on NAND silicon results in shorter duty
cycle
• Proper vibration dampening and cooling, and selfhealing technology can result in failure rates as low as
0.1% per annum
Level of belief: Medium
Reality: Myth – Hybrid arrays can deliver true
“zero touch” duty cycles of over 7 years
X-IO Technologies – Confidential
Seven Deadly Myths
Myth #5: All-flash costs the same as hybrid storage
• 60% do not expect price parity for several years
to come
• High cost of all-flash cited as single biggest
barrier to deployment
• Dedupe and compression claim to lower amount
of raw storage
• Ironically, it’s usually low performance datasets
that benefit most from dedupe/compression
Level of belief: Low
Reality: Myth – Customers should look at real-life
workloads and 5 year TCO
X-IO Technologies – Confidential
Seven Deadly Myths
Myth #6: Using consumer-grade flash is acceptable for
most enterprises
Level of belief: Low
Reality: Myth – Customers clearly see the risk of
such technologies
X-IO Technologies – Confidential
Seven Deadly Myths
Myth #7: Most businesses need the performance
all-flash offers
• 90% believe no actual need for
promised performance
• Less than 10% of businesses peaked
above 100,000 IOPS
Level of belief: Low
Reality: Myth – For most orginizations, all flash
arrays are complete overkill for their requirements
X-IO Technologies – Confidential
Price / Peformance / RELIABILITY
What two things do you most look for when buying
high-performance storage?
8%
11%
2%
28%
12%
18%
21%
Reliability
Price
Speed
Operating costs
High availability
Support
Long warranty
Source: Vanson Bourne Market Survey for X-IO, 2013
X-IO Technologies – Confidential
Analysts finally taking note
15
X-IO Technologies – Confidential
Achieving the Best of Both Worlds
Balancing Cost, Growth & Risk
Traditional
Enterprise
HDD Storage
Real-Time
Strengths Hybrid
Hard Drives for…
Price
Storage
Capacity
Proven Technology
Sequential Workloads
Low Risk Balanced
Longevity
Performance
Weaknesses Cost
Latency Reliability
Perceived Reliability
Density / Scale
High• Only realtime Hybrid
Performance
Storage
Flash Storage
available
Strengths
• High
Flash DrivesI/O
for…
Performance
Performance
Low Latency
Low Latency
• Low Power
Random Workloads
Low Power*
• True
Footprint
Balance of
Weaknesses
Cost, Risk &
Finite Lifetime
Mixed workload Growth
ability
Cost• Unique 5
year inclusive
warranty
X-IO Technologies – Confidential
Performance where it’s needed
Intelligent
Storage
Element
Hyper ISE
with
CADP
High
Availability
Consistent
Performance
Delivering
Highest
Risk
Performance
in
Cost Storage
Growth
the
marketplace
with HDDs
Scale-Out
Management
Zero-Touch
Reliability
Accelerated
Performance
Delivering
SSD performance
with low cost, TCO
and operational
simplicity
X-IO Technologies – Confidential
Proof from the field
• The requirement

High Performance Storage for a bespoke app – large sequential write
followed by random reads
• The competition

Whiptail & Violin Memory
• The challenge

Be “good enough” AND help the customer’s energy problems
• The result



Performance the same
Power usage 50% lower than Violin
Five year CAPEX cost 33% of Violin price

Additional concerns around Violin roadmap and serviceability
X-IO Technologies – Confidential
The X-IO Effect
Large Housing Association
UK
Reduced virtualisation support calls by
80% with capex spend at less than 70%
of incumbent storage vendor
Industrial Manufacturer
Germany
Reduced SAP Transaction times by 90%
with an investment of $100,000
Large Independent School
District - US
Reduced virtual desktop login times by
over 90%
Retail Banking ISV
Reduced “close of business” time from 4
hours to 40 minutes and changed
storage footprint by 93%
Cloud Services Provider
UK
Increased I/O performance by 25x and
improved VM deployment speed by 20x
X-IO Technologies – Confidential
Storage is all about Balance
•
Hard drives are far from dead

•
Flash is a tool, not a solution

•
Activity based tiering can be dangerous – Use real time IO analysis
The storage marketplace is changing

•
Capacity where it’s needed – Don’t focus too much on IOps
Storage should provide performance and reliability – not whistles and bells
Look at 5 year TCO, not just acquisition price

Also balance $/GB and $/IOP – Not mutually exclusive
X-IO Technologies – Confidential
THANK YOU
Jim Litke
jim.litke@x-io.com