The arrival of more affordable flash storage promises to break storage`s bottleneck on application performance for the foreseeable future. To get the most out of flash, you need to implement it in the right way and with the right complementary technologies, however. That way, you can extract maximum performance and greater efficiency from your solid-state storage deployments and storage networks overall. For active data, for instance, flash delivers better performance with fewer moving parts than hard disk drives. The result is that flash is often less expensive to deploy than hard disks for primary data use cases, especially over the long haul. The problem with solid state storage is that only 5-10% of the data in the data center is active at any given time. So you can also save some money and store the remaining 90% or more on a cheaper and higher capacity hard drive or, as more and more organizations are doing, in the cloud.
As this example illustrates, flash alone will not necessarily improve data storage efficiency and performance. You need to start with a solid foundation, which brings us to the first of seven tips for faster, more efficient memory.

Improved network storage

While it’s true that the latency of a hard drive-based system won’t expose network weaknesses, a flash-based system will. Therefore, before switching to flash storage or adding an additional SSD to an existing system, you must first optimize the capacity of your storage area network. Three components of this network must be considered: Host Bus Adapters (HBAs) or Network Interface Cards (NICs) in servers and storage systems, network switches, and cabling infrastructure.
It’s tempting to just look at the bandwidth capabilities of the first two components (NIC/HBA and switch), which should be 10 GbE or 16 Gbps Fiber Channel (FC) or faster. While bandwidth is important, latency and delivery quality are even more important. Most data centers do not generate enough persistent transactions to flood the high-speed network. Instead, they generate millions of very small transactions. The efficiency of the network in moving these transactions from server to storage and back is key to getting maximum performance from a lightning investment.

Cabling is also very important and is an often overlooked factor in SAN performance and data storage efficiency. You should build fiber infrastructure to support the high-bandwidth, low-latency capabilities of your current and next-generation networks, and structure that infrastructure to easily define port assignments . You also need to understand “link loss budget”, which is the amount of signal lost between connections. Once you’ve fine-tuned your storage network, it’s time to consider a flash implementation.
Server-side flash implementation
In the server-side flash design, the network and the storage attached to that network remain the same, with HDD storage arrays essentially installed where the speed and quality of the storage network is less important than when Implement a shared flash bay. However, how you take advantage of server-side flash can vary.
The design that has the least impact on the network is when you isolate the Flash memory from the server. Here you install an SSD or a PCIe Flash card that is only responsible for this server’s I/O. The server itself becomes a single point of failure, so this use case is only suitable for read caching of data that is stored on a shared storage array.
By contrast, there are server-side flash techniques that aggregate internal flash storage from multiple servers to create a virtual flash pool. These server-side flash aggregation products build in redundancy and are suitable for read and write caching or even as a storage tier. They do introduce the network factor in terms of performance, however, since the aggregation requires a network to create the virtual storage pool.
Deploy a network cache
Unlike a storage system upgrade, which only increases the performance of a single system, a network cache improves the performance of every storage system on the network. These devices essentially sit between the storage system and the server, caching the most active data. Many network caches are available in high availability configurations, making them suitable for caching both read and write I/O. You can also size the network buffer to have a flash storage area large enough to store all of an organization’s active data, essentially turning existing arrays into a data protection storage system and storage.
A significant benefit of network caching is its ability to improve storage performance without replacing existing data protection policies and procedures. These processes remain unchanged as the data will now be placed on both the cache and the original storage system.

Note that it is important to find a network cache that can programmatically clear the cache before a snapshot or backup task begins. You should also consider the quality of the network infrastructure and its components prior to deployment. Consider cloud-enabled network cache
This variant of the network cache option uses a hybrid cloud approach. Some vendors, such as Avere, Microsoft Azure StorSimple, Nasuni, and EMC’s TwinStrata, offer all-flash network caching that moves dormant data to a cloud storage location like Amazon, Azure, or Google instead of local storage. In fact, this is probably one of the most practical paths to an all-flash data center, because the data center can now actually be fully flash while the old data is stored and stored. Cloud protection. Deploying SDS with a small flash array
Another option to improve storage performance and data storage efficiency is to use software-defined storage (SDS). These products run on a single device or in a hypervisor and provide a common host of software feature sets across multiple hardware arrays. Some SDS systems can take advantage of existing storage hardware and provide automatic data migration between them. If you are adding a small flash array to an existing infrastructure, you can use SDS to automatically migrate the most active dataset to the array to improve performance and, as a bonus, simplify management because then all memory management will become unified.
Application optimization
Carefully consider the applications you plan to run before implementing a new storage system or upgrading an existing storage system. Many hosting professionals find this particularly intimidating because they don’t own the application and don’t understand the code around it. The good news is that there are programs available that can review application code, provide an objective analysis of its quality, and make specific recommendations on what to change and where.
While you’d love to skip this step and add more documentation to the problem, don’t. A code-related performance problem can be masked by high-performance storage, but it won’t allow flash to reach its full potential, forcing administrators to scramble to find the weak points. other potential performance detractors, such as network storage. Fixing the code before flash implementation can even avoid the need for flash in the first place or reduce the number of flashes you need to buy. Buy a new all-flash array or combo
These are ideal for data centers that have existing hard drive-based systems still in service and still under the original warranty, so you can redeploy older hard drive systems and enhance them with a new flash array. However, at some point, you will need to purchase a new storage system. Today that means choosing between an all-flash array or a hybrid. The initial decision is relatively simple: if the organization can afford to purchase an array of 100 flashes that meet the power requirements (it can be assumed that the performance requirements will be met), then buy an array and don’t watch it again.
However, many organizations will not find a flash array to fit their budget. They can enjoy the same benefits of all-flash arrays without this investment by choosing associative arrays, combining flash drives and hard drives in the same system, and then, through software, automatically move data between them.
The main concern with associative arrays, lack of buffering, is a thing of the past. This is a concern when flash capacity is so expensive that the flash tier of the associative array takes up less than 5% of total storage. Now, however, the flash level is typically 25% (if not more), which greatly reduces the chance of cache misses.
Summary
The road to improving storage performance doesn’t start with a quick investment. It starts with a thorough inspection of the entire storage network. Once that’s done, there are many other options for improving storage performance and data storage efficiency to consider, many of which include several types of flash storage implementations. Which product works best varies from one data center to another, and with some of the tips in this article, some computer stores may not even need to upgrade their storage systems. surname.