[observation] Dell technology + Intel aoteng Technology: leading storage innovation with "nanosecond speed"

Held recently 2022 Dell Technology Group Global Summit （DTW 2022） On , Dell technology has released the next generation of PowerMax, This is the PowerMax 2018 The biggest upgrade since its release in , brought 2 Times faster performance improvement ,14 Times higher storage density , And possess 2 Times the write bandwidth ,50% Lower response time , as well as 7 Times the capacity per node , Become worthy of the name “ Mission critical enterprise storage .”

More Than This , The fastest growing new storage architecture in Dell's storage history ——PowerStore 3.0 Also released 120 A number of new features , At the same time, its hardware platform has also brought comprehensive updates , Including support for next generation controllers , Support NVMe Expand , And support 100GbE Network, etc . That's why , In terms of improving workload performance ,PowerStore 3.0 Brought up to 50% Faster mixed workloads ; As many as 70% Faster write operations ; As many as 10 Times faster copy operations ; Support up to 8 Times more volumes , This increases the effective capacity of the entire storage system 66% wait .

that , Why as “ Fifth generation storage ” Of PowerMax and Powerstore The performance improvement will be so great ？ This has to be mentioned behind “ unsung hero ”—— Intel Haughty Persistent memory and Intel Haughty Solid state disk , And Intel QAT Hardware compression technology .

In the recent 《CP To talk about “ core ”—— How to use “ Nanosecond speed ” Lead storage innovation 》 In the video program of , Li Junpeng, senior consultant of Greater China Marketing Department of Dell technology group, and Intel （ China ） Li Bo, a nonvolatile memory technology expert in the Data Center Group Sales Department of Ltd , It gives us a detailed explanation of the development trend of a series of new technologies of Intel 、 Application and landing , And what happens in the joint innovation between the two sides “ Behind the scenes ” The story of .

With “ Nanosecond speed ” Lead storage innovation

as everyone knows , As a high-end enterprise storage product series of Dell technology group PowerMax, More than 30 years since its birth ,PowerMax By maintaining technological innovation and iteration , With its high performance 、 Key features such as high reliability and high expansion , Not only in “ Fifth generation storage ” Has set the benchmark of the industry , It has become the core support of key applications in the process of digital transformation of many enterprises .

according to the understanding of , As early as 2018 year PowerMax We took the lead in implementing the backend NVMe,2019 In, it realized the front-end NVMe over Fabric （NVMe-oF）, The move marks PowerMax End to end NVMe, At the same time PowerMax It also uses dual channel Intel Haughty Solid state disk , The full adoption of the new generation of media really makes PowerMax Greatly improve the performance of multi controller architecture , Can be up to 1500 Ten thousand IOPS、350GB/s Bandwidth and can be shortened 50% Response time of , Give Way PowerMax It has become the fastest storage array in the world .

On this basis , The latest release of the next generation PowerMax, It is also protecting high-value data 、 Comprehensive innovations have been made in simplifying storage operation and maintenance and maintaining continuous modernization , Especially through the adoption of Dynamic Fabric technology , Let the new generation PowerMax Achieved less than 60 Microsecond read delay , And below 120 Microsecond write delay , This is a very big performance improvement for high-end storage systems .

Regarding this , Li Junpeng said ：“PowerMax It is the first in the industry to use Intel Haughty Solid state disks are arrays for persistent storage , Based on the previous generation SAS SSD comparison ,PowerMax By adopting NVMe SSD comparison SAS SSD Response time is reduced 25%, Then intel Haughty Solid state disk later , Than SAS SSD The response time is reduced by up to 50%, The reason behind this is not only the optimization of software , The greater credit still comes from Intel Haughty Solid state disk , This reduction in response time is very significant in high-end storage .”

In Li Bo's opinion , be based on 3D XPoint Intel media Haughty Solid state disk and current market based on NAND Chip NAND SSD In fact, there are essential differences , Haughty Solid state disk is through a three-dimensional address addressing chip , The read / write operation can be realized by bit addressing technology , No garbage collection is required during the whole process , In addition, the unique algorithm design in the chip controller , In this way, the bandwidth and latency of the storage system can be greatly improved ; and NAND SSD It is used to read and write on a page by page basis , Erasure is achieved on a block by block basis , There will be a lot of garbage to be recycled in the whole process , This in turn affects the performance .

“ Conventional NAND SSD There is a very obvious short board problem , namely NAND SSD Although a single disk has 15TB The capacity of , But it is limited by the interface bandwidth and media , There is no way to read data from the disk quickly CPU The memory of , This will further affect the computing needs of industry users for artificial intelligence , And Intel Haughty The solid-state disk uses a unique medium , Its throughput per second is equivalent to 8 High speed of the channel , So as long as you want to bring it back after falling off the plate , You can read and write directly , And similar applications are used in banks 、 securities 、 Quantify transactions and EDA In design , Have a wide range of needs and applications .” Li Bo said .

Redefine the memory storage hierarchy

in fact , The conversation between the two experts also revealed a new change trend in the current storage field —— Storage is entering the stage of tiered storage , stay “ Storage pyramid ” You can see in the structure , Store the cost of each tier 、 performance 、 There are magnitude differences in the indicators of delay . among , The closer you get up CPU, The smaller the storage capacity, the faster the storage speed , distance CPU The farther , Large capacity but slow speed , And what the inner existence plays in this structure is “ Bearing on the ”( Undertake the high-speed data reading and writing requirements of computing ) as well as “ Under the rev. ”( Extract the hot data that needs frequent access to the level with faster reading and writing speed ) The key role of .

And Intel Haughty Solid state disk has been adopted by more and more customers with its ultra-high performance . however , Intel Haughty SSD It is only Intel's innovation in the field of storage media in recent years “ Representative work ” One of , Intel's other big “ Ace in the hole ” Intel Aoteng persistent memory , As a new memory interface form , It naturally has a huge advantage in response time , It can change the response time of the entire storage system from “ Microsecond ” Up to the “ nanosecond ” Level , Basically, we have achieved and DDR Read response levels at the same speed , Really redefined the memory storage hierarchy .

Again , Intel Aoteng persistent memory and DRAM The difference lies in , It can scale out higher capacity at a more economical cost ( Large capacity , And higher data storage density / Price ratio ), And have data non-volatile , Or persistence .

Besides , Intel Aoteng persistent memory also provides two usage modes ： One way is memory mode , In this mode, it is simply cheap and sufficient , But the memory that will not save data after power failure , It can be used as DRAM Memory capacity expansion partner ; Another way is Direct Pattern , In this mode, the operating system will DRAM Memory and Intel Aoteng persistent memory is regarded as two independent memory pools , This makes Intel Aoteng persistent memory can be addressed like memory , And have data persistence like a storage device , This persistence allows it to retain previously loaded data during machine restart , Thus, the business elasticity of the system can be increased , Reduce restart time , Speed up business recovery .

Of course , If the user has a demand for memory mode , There are also workloads that need to run on App Direct In mode , So intel Aoteng persistent memory can also activate the third working mode —— Dual mode , This mode can be pre configured , Partially in memory mode , The rest are in App Direct Pattern , Thus, users can realize “ Have your cake and eat it ” The goal of .

Li Bo said ：“ At present, many cloud service providers and Internet manufacturers are using aoteng persistent storage as a new storage solution , In practical applications , The write performance of aoteng persistent storage can reach 40 Microsecond , The performance of read operation can reach 20-30 Microsecond . therefore , Including metadata and VDI In such an application , Intel Aoteng persistent memory can play an important role .”

Take metadata as an example , With Intel Aoteng persistent memory or solid-state disk to save metadata , Enables overall data acceleration . Li Junpeng also added ：“PowerStore stay 2020 When it was released in, it also supports SCM Optane SSD Do persistent storage , Later, I found that Intel Haughty There is another good use of solid-state disks , Do metadata ,PowerStore With Intel Haughty Solid state disks do metadata , Its response time can be reduced by up to 15%. Therefore, it is especially suitable for some extreme trading scenarios , Like stock trading 、 The core transaction system of the bank or the billing system of the telecom, etc .”

Also in VDI Application , With the rise of telecommuting and home office , So now VDI The density of virtual machines in applications is also the goal pursued by various manufacturers , I hope each physical machine can support more VDI desktop , So the occupied space of the computer room 、 Energy saving 、 Refrigeration, etc. will achieve more savings , And if Intel Aoteng persistent memory is introduced into VDI Application , It can greatly improve the performance and the overall TCO Cost reduction . data display ,VID After introducing aoteng persistent memory into the application , Memory capacity increased by up to 33%; The number of virtual machines per node has been increased by up to 36%; And the hardware cost of each virtual machine is reduced by as much as 30%, let me put it another way , If Intel Aoteng persistent memory as VDI When using large memory in , Can play “ Yield twice the result with half the effort ” The effect of .

QAT The unique charm of hardware compression technology

It is worth mentioning that , stay VDI In order to better improve the performance in the application , Intel also offers another big “ Magic weapon ”—— Intel QAT technology , The technology can be based on hardware , Accelerating network security 、 route 、 Common compression and encryption workloads in applications such as storage and big data , It can not only improve the processor utilization, but also meet the security requirements of users .

stay Dell technology recently released PowerStore in , With Intel QAT Technology realizes 4：1 Of “ Compression ratio ”.“ PowerStore In the application scenario of the actual customer , Most application scenarios can be implemented 4：1 Data reduction rate of , And has no impact on performance , How can such a high data compression ratio be achieved ？ In fact, Intel is adopted QAT Hardware compression technology , If not QAT Hardware compression , Its response time and performance will be greatly affected .” Li Junpeng said .

The specific term , stay PowerStore Written by the host in I/O To PowerStore Cache in , One is written in DRAM in , The other is written in NVRAM（ Non volatile cache ） in , At the same time, when writing disks to the back end , It will enter a compression process , At this point, a 8K Of I/O Compress , Then the weight will be removed , After compression and weight elimination, it will be assembled into a relatively large I/O Then write to the back-end disk , While reading a I/O when , Will automatically enter the decompression process , At this time, intel QAT Hardware accelerated weight removal and compression are used “ place ”, This technology does not use the main CPU Of I/O cycle , It can also achieve online weight elimination and compression “ No damage to performance ”.

Li Junpeng said ：“ In fact, many full flash memory are used in the fourth generation storage , But the fourth generation of all flash memory still uses SAS SSD, Not used NVMe SSD, but SAS The interface is designed for mechanical hard disk , Therefore, under this kind of application, it can not give full play to NAND The function of flash memory , and NVMe Can better play NAND The value of flash memory , But if you turn on weight removal and compression , Then the performance of the storage array will be greatly degraded , Generally, the performance of compression can be reduced 20% about , Weight loss will also decrease 10% within , If you add weight dissipation / No matter how bad the compression algorithm is , Then the performance will drop directly 50% about , So the impact is very big , and PowerStore By using Intel QAT technology , And completely resolve this challenge .”

More importantly , Intel QAT Not only has standard compression / Decompression capability , It can ensure the security of data transmission through lossless data compression , Protect data at rest ; At the same time, it is encrypting / Decryption is also unique , Intel QAT By providing Intel key protection technology （ Intel KPT）, It can also help protect the encrypted private key , With Intel KPT, Before the user enters the virtual machine that needs to use the private key , The private key is always encrypted , Only Intel in the chip QAT Can decrypt this private key , In this way, the key is better protected at the hardware level “ The blessing ”.

Li Bo stressed ：“ It used to be through CPU To calculate the encryption and decryption , This will cause CPU There's a lot of pressure , Many times, you will find in the storage CPU It's full turn , but I/O Throughput is still waiting CPU We're done , But through Intel QAT technology , Can maximize the promotion of encryption / Throughput during decryption .”

thus it can be seen , Take full advantage of Intel QAT technology , Undoubtedly, it can effectively improve the overall encryption and computing power of the storage system , Significantly reduce the support pressure of hardware , Greatly improve reduplication / Compression computing speed , Lower the of the front desk I/O Processing delay , So as to effectively improve the processing efficiency of full flash storage real-time business , And then provide users with more real-time 、 More cost-effective full flash storage services , And better deal with the current outbreak of massive small file storage problems .

Drive continuous innovation and evolution of storage media

without doubt , Today, the data of enterprises not only maintain exponential growth , At the same time, its types are becoming more and more diversified , And storage stability 、 Scalability and performance also need “ Keep pace with the times ” Keep upgrading and evolving , therefore , This requires new storage media , Such as persistent memory 、 New technologies such as full flash reconstruct and transform the original storage architecture , To meet what we can see now , And in the future, more and more data applications .

On this subject , At the end of the dialogue, the two technical experts also predicted and analyzed the development trend of storage media in the future . Li Bo revealed that ：“ At the end of this year or the beginning of next year , It will also release the next generation computing platform , Internal code is ‘Sapphire Rapids’.”

According to introducing ,“Sapphire Rapids” There are two important technological innovations in computing platforms , First, Intel will add a platform named CXL Components of the bus , It is different from the traditional memory bus , Is in PCIe Gen 5 On the bus of CXL The agreement , On this protocol bus, some traditional Store Class Memory, That is what the industry usually calls SCM, At the same time SCM after , It can still maintain cache consistency with memory ; Two is , Carrying CXL The bus storage medium is slightly slower than the memory bus , But the advantage is that its capacity will be much larger than the memory capacity .

All in all , be based on “Sapphire Rapids” platform , Intel will introduce a speed similar to memory , A product similar to storage capacity , In order to realize the “ repair ”, At the same time, it can also put the hot data into DDR On , Warm data is put into aoteng persistent memory , The cold data can be put into aoteng SSD On , The data that needs to be archived can be put into the traditional HDD On , Finally, it can better meet the needs of users for current storage media innovation , Further accelerate the calculation of artificial intelligence and big data .

Li Junpeng finally said ：“ This year, Dell technology put forward the concept of software driven storage innovation , The core is to create a more adaptable software architecture to match the needs of storage system evolution , On the one hand, it enables customers' storage systems to have comprehensive network elasticity , On the other hand, it can also obtain multi cloud control and mobility , Better adapt to the needs of future digital transformation .”

It can be expected that , In the future, more and more enterprises will make use of innovative storage media and technologies to achieve “ Storage pyramid ” The replacement speed of memory and storage in will also be accelerated , And Intel is also cooperating deeply with partners like Dell technology , With “ Nanosecond speed ” Lead storage innovation , And continuously promote the innovation and evolution of storage media , Better carry the landing of users' key businesses and extreme applications , Finally, it will provide more powerful support for the digital transformation of enterprises .

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Shen Yao's scientific and technological observation , Founded by shensky, a cross-border self media person of science and technology and automobile ,19 Years of working experience in enterprise level technology media , Long term focus on enterprise digitization 、 Industrial intelligence 、ICT infrastructure 、 Observation and Reflection on the content of automobile science and Technology .