Physical disk I/O is measured in milliseconds, an eternity
when compared to the faster operations within other server components such as
network RAM and CPU speeds. For many years, Oracle shops have been
embracing solid-state disks (SSD), RAM disks that operate hundreds of time
faster than the old-fashioned platter technology from the 1960's. SSD also
has not channel contention, and as prices fall, SSD will eventually displace the
ancient magnetic spinning platters of the past century.
Now we see that
Sun Solaris is offering 32 gigabytes in internal SSD technology
in almost all of the new Sun servers and that SSD is especially useful for
database application where I/O can be a major bottleneck. Sun notes that
their internal SSD consumes one-fifth the power and is a hundred times
faster than the magnetic-coated spinning platter disk. They note that SSD
is perfect for I/O intensive systems like Oracle applications:
"Like EMC, Sun is predicting big things for flash.
While flash storage is far more expensive than disk on a per-gigabyte
basis, Sun argues that flash is cheaper for high-performance applications
that rely on fast IOPS (I/O Operations Per Second) speeds."
Sun also notes that all the major hardware vendors are predicting big things
for SSD, and predicts that flash SSD disks will be adopted quickly for anyone
developing systems using database products like Oracle:
"The majority of enterprises building I/O-intensive applications will use
some amount of flash within a year, Fowler predicted. Databases like Oracle,
MySQL and IBM DB2 are ideal candidates, he says."
Choosing the right SSD for Oracle
Burleson Consulting has been deploying SSD for several years, and some I/O
intensive Oracle systems can see up to 600x faster performance. SSD is
also very popular with Oracle RAC databases because it reduces cache fusion
overhead because you can define very small data buffer caches on each node.
Burleson Consulting has been deploying SSD on Oracle database since 2005 and
we have experienced SSD experts to help any Oracle shop evaluate whether SSD
is right for your application. BC experts can also help you choose the SSD
that is best for your database. Just
call 800-766-1884 or e-mail
for
SSD support details.
2008 Market Survey of SSD vendors for
Oracle:
There are many vendors who offer rack-mount solid-state disk that
work with Oracle databases, and the competitive market ensures that
product offerings will continuously improve while prices fall.
SearchStorage notes that SSD is will soon replace platter disks and that
hundreds of SSD vendors may enter the market:
"The number of vendors in this category could rise to several
hundred in the next 3 years as enterprise users become more familiar
with the benefits of this type of storage."
As of June 2008, many of the major hardware vendors (including Sun and
EMC) are replacing slow disks with RAM-based disks, and
Sun announced that all
of their large servers will offer SSD.
As of June 2008, here are the major SSD vendors for Oracle databases
(vendors are listed alphabetically):
2008 rack mount SSD Performance Statistics
SearchStorage has done a comprehensive survey of rack mount SSD
vendors, and lists these SSD rack mount vendors, with this showing the
fastest rack-mount SSD devices (as of May 15, 2008):
|
manufacturer |
model |
technology |
interface |
performance metrics and notes |
|
Texas Memory Systems |
RamSan-400 |
RAM SSD |
Fibre
Channel
InfiniBand |
3,000MB/s random
sustained external throughput, 400,000 random IOPS |
|
Violin Memory |
Violin 1010 |
RAM SSD
|
PCIe |
1,400MB/s read,
1,00MB/s write with ×4 PCIe, 3 microseconds latency |
|
Solid Access Technologies |
USSD 200FC |
RAM SSD |
Fibre Channel
SAS
SCSI |
391MB/s random
sustained read or write per port (full duplex is 719MB/s), with
8 x 4Gbps FC ports aggregated throughput is approx 2,000MB/s,
320,000 IOPS |
|
Curtis |
HyperXCLR R1000 |
RAM SSD |
Fibre Channel
|
197MB/s sustained
R/W transfer rate, 35,000 IOPS |
Choosing the right SSD for Oracle
When evaluating SSD for Oracle databases you need
to consider performance (throughput and response time), reliability (Mean Time Between failures) and
TCO (total cost of ownership). Most SSD vendors will provide a
test RAM disk array for benchmark testing so that you can choose the
vendor who offers the best price/performance ratio.
Burleson Consulting does not partner with any SSD vendors and we
provide independent advice in this constantly-changing market. BC
was one of the earliest adopters of SSD for Oracle and we have been
deploying SSD on Oracle database since 2005 and we have experienced SSD
experts to help any Oracle shop evaluate whether SSD
is right for your application. BC experts can also help you choose
the SSD that is best for your database. Just
call 800-766-1884 or e-mail.:
for
SSD support details. |
 |
|
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