Solid state drive technology for ProLiant servers

7
Server SSDs for different needs – value, mainstream, and performance
Our current 3 Gb/s SATA solid state drives are just the first building blocks for an HP family of SSDs
designed to meet a variety of workload, capacity, and performance requirements. All HP SSDs are
Enterprise-class devices because they deliver I/O performance -- particularly read performance -- that
is as good as or better than Enterprise-class disk drives. SSDs differ in the read/write workload levels
that they support and their endurance, or expected service life. Today’s HP SATA SSDs are
considered Enterprise mainstream storage devices. They address workload-constrained environments
and have a 3-year service life. The first Enterprise performance SSDs will be available in early 2011.
They will address unconstrained workload environments. Enterprise value SSDs will provide relatively
large storage capacities at lower costs, but they will not have the endurance of the mainstream or
performance SSDs. Table 5 compares the endurance and workload characteristics of the SSD classes
that we expect to offer.
Table 5. Comparison of HP solid state drive classes
Enterprise value Enterprise mainstream Enterprise performance
Interface(s) 3 Gb/s SATA 3 Gb/s SATA
6 Gb/s SAS (Early 2011)
6 Gb/s SAS
General
description
SFF and LFF Hot Plug SFF and LFF Hot Plug SFF and LFF Hot Plug
Availability Early 2011 Currently Shipping Early 2011
Capacities 200 – 800 GB 60 GB and 120 GB
200+ GB in 2011
200 GB +
NAND
technology
MLC SLC
MLC in 2011
SLC
Workload High read/Low write
applications
Equal read/write
applications
Unrestricted read/write
applications
Reliability
Endurance
1year service life @
constrained write
workloads
3 year service life @
constrained write
workloads
3-5 year service life
Unconstrained workloads
Data Retention < 1 year < 1 year < 1 year
Usage
environment
Boot devices
Applications high in
reads but few or no
writes or data is transient
High IO/s applications Mission critical
High IO/s applications
In addition to better workload and endurance characteristics, Enterprise performance SSDs will
provide improved throughput and IOPs over the other classes of SSDs. Performance class SSDs are
expected to deliver random read performance of 60,000 IOPs compared to 18,000 for today’s
mainstream SSDs, and should be able to support 450 MB/s of sustained throughput for sequential
reads.
I/O accelerators – the new kid on the storage “block”
I/O accelerators are a new class of storage product based around flash memory technologies. As
with all modern storage, I/O accelerators present themselves as standard block level storage devices,
allowing applications to access them as they would any other storage volume. Unlike SSDs, however,
they are not plug-compatible storage components and not accessed through a standard drive