NVMe SSDs are seeing rapid adoption in the cloud, enterprise data centres, and edge computing for data-intensive applications such as relational databases and NoSQL environments. However, the data in these SSDs is temporary and will persist only during the lifetime of their associated virtual machine instances. NVMe SSD storage is ephemeral for all of the major cloud service providers including Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud Platform. If customers want to protect data in these SSDs, they have to opt for Elastic Block Storage in AWS or equivalent persistent disk options in Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud Platform. The problem is that these options often require sacrificing performance in exchange for data protection and availability.

Figure 1. An Innovative Approach to Protecting Data For SSD-Based Applications

Figure 1 shows to protect the data on high-performance SSDs, most server OEMs use traditional RAID controllers, which were originally designed for hard disk drives. When traditional RAID is deployed with modern SSDs, it behaves in a way that massively reduces SSD performance and endurance, while requiring additional SSD drives for redundancy, reducing available capacity.

Edge Performance Difficulties

Edge computing aims to bring data and storage closer to where it's needed, emphasizing the need for resilient storage capable of withstanding SSD failures in remote edge data centers. The absence of personnel at these locations to address failed SSDs heightens the importance of robust storage solutions. However, conventional RAID approaches often negate the advantages of edge server performance and capacity in favor of data protection. Addressing this challenge, Pliops Extreme Data Processor (XDP) was specifically developed. Pliops XDP ensures dependable RAID data protection without compromising performance. It unlocks the full potential of SSDs by eliminating ineffective storage operations and offloading compute-intensive data processing tasks from the CPU.

Pliops XDP optimizes the interaction between applications and SSDs. It achieves this by compressing, indexing, and sorting data before writing it to SSDs in sequential patterns, including parity for data protection. This fundamental enhancement to data processing, management, and storage accelerates application performance, augments reliability, and facilitates scalability, all while reducing the total cost of ownership (TCO).

Pliops XDP transforms random writes into compressed sequential writes, resulting in improved storage performance, utilization, and SSD durability when compared to conventional RAID 5/6 solutions. The utilization of compression also reduces the data to be read, thereby enhancing read throughput and decreasing latency, all while mitigating the impacts of IO amplification. Unlike traditional RAID's dedicated hot spare disk approach, Pliops XDP's Drive Failure Protection (DFP) leverages all SSDs, utilizing a virtual hot capacity (VHC) to enhance performance and capacity advantages.

The remarkable performance of Pliops XDP is rooted in its hardware-driven approach. Hardware-accelerated engines manage line-rate compression, and a hardware-based key-value storage engine, akin to RocksDB on a chip, constitutes a significant portion of XDP's performance enhancements.

Validations By Independent Engineers

The groundbreaking impact of the Pliops XDP on enterprise workloads has prompted reputable engineering and validation firms to evaluate its capabilities. Principled Technologies, a well-known firm, conducted an evaluation comparing Pliops XDP with traditional RAID controllers in a Dell PowerEdge server setup mirroring traditional data center. The evaluation aimed to gauge enterprise application requirements, sustained performance, availability, and SLA compliance. The detailed system specifications and reports are available for review. The study emphasizes the performance advantages of XDP and its ability to meet SLA goals even in the face of SSD storage failures.

Leading independent storage authority StorageReview also performed a comprehensive technical assessment of Pliops XDP, focusing on enterprise IoT applications. Their evaluation centered on testing reliability, storage capacity, and efficiency using high-density QLC SSDs. The report from StorageReview outlines how architects can design enterprise systems for superior performance, heightened reliability, and extended QLC SSD lifespan by reducing write amplification, thereby lowering deployment costs.

Many Trillions of Searches Per Hour

A prominent SaaS provider operates numerous MariaDB instances to cater to a substantial customer base, processing billions of queries each hour. While the setup was designed to optimize SSD storage performance and boost MariaDB query rates, it posed a challenge in terms of application availability. Any SSD failure would trigger multiple MariaDB instances and users to shift to secondary servers, impacting customer satisfaction and escalating the workload of traffic rebalancing.

However, with the integration of Pliops XDP, the SaaS provider revamped their MariaDB instances, ensuring fully protected storage. This allowed them to withstand SSD failures without compromising application performance. As a result, the company not only achieved enhanced application reliability but also experienced added performance and capacity advantages attributed to line-rate compression. This enabled the provider to increase the number of MariaDB instances per server, contributing to their overall operational efficiency and success.

Enabling AI Architecture That Is Efficient, Effective, And Dependable

A major SaaS provider manages numerous MariaDB instances to serve a large customer base, processing billions of queries hourly. While the initial setup aimed to optimize SSD storage performance for increased MariaDB query rates, it posed a challenge to application availability. Any SSD failure led to multiple MariaDB instances and users shifting to secondary servers, impacting customer satisfaction and increasing traffic rebalancing efforts.

By incorporating Pliops XDP into their infrastructure, the SaaS provider overhauled their MariaDB instances to ensure robust storage protection. This enabled them to withstand SSD failures without compromising application performance. Consequently, they achieved improved application reliability and experienced additional performance and capacity benefits due to line-rate compression. This empowered the provider to scale up the number of MariaDB instances per server, ultimately boosting operational efficiency and overall success.

Nvme Ssds Operate at Full Speed

Pliops XDP presents an ideal solution for system, storage, and data architects tasked with creating efficient data protection strategies across edge and cloud platforms, aligning with the growing demands of business applications. Through customer implementations and independent engineering validations, Pliops XDP has proven its ability to enhance application performance, extend SSD endurance and lifespan, and effectively manage data expansion through integrated data compression.

Architects can leverage Pliops XDP to configure applications, ensuring availability, minimizing application downtime, and enhancing recoverability. This leads to reduced total cost of ownership for data infrastructure across edge, data center, and cloud deployments, all while maintaining the sought-after high performance inherent in NVMe SSD storage.

Source:InfoWorld

Cite this article:

Janani R (2023), An Innovative Approach to Protecting Data For SSD-Based Applications,Anatechmaz, pp.567