1.6 Million 4K IOPS in 1RU on Sun Storage F5100 Flash Array
Significance of Results
The Sun Storage F5100 Flash Array is a high performance high density solid state flash array delivering over 1.6M IOPS (4K IO) and 12.8GB/sec throughput (1M reads). The Flash Array is designed to accelerate IO-intensive applications, such as databases, at a fraction of the power, space, and cost of traditional hard disk drives. It is based on enterprise-class SLC flash technology, with advanced wear-leveling, integrated backup protection, solid state robustness, and 3M hours MTBF reliability.
- The Sun Storage F5100 Flash Array demonstrates breakthrough performance of 1.6M IOPS for 4K random reads
- The Sun Storage F5100 Flash Array can also perform 1.2M IOPS for 4K random writes
- The Sun Storage F5100 Flash Array has unprecedented throughput of 12.8 GB/sec.
Performance Landscape
Results were obtained using four hosts.
Bandwidth and IOPS Measurements
| Test | Flash Modules | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 80 | 40 | 20 | 1 | |
| Random 4K Read | 1,591K IOPS | 796K IOPS | 397K IOPS | 21K IOPS |
| Maximum Delivered Random 4K Write | 1,217K IOPS | 610K IOPS | 304K IOPS | 15K IOPS |
| Maximum Delivered 50-50 4K Read/Write | 850K IOPS | 426K IOPS | 213K IOPS | 11K IOPS |
| Sequential Read (1M) | 12.8 GB/sec | 6.4 GB/sec | 3.2 GB/sec | 265 MB/sec |
| Maximum Delivered Sequential Write (1M) | 9.7 GB/sec | 4.8 GB/sec | 2.4 GB/sec | 118 MB/sec |
| |
||||
| Sustained Random 4K Write* | 311K IOPS | 169K IOPS | 86K IOPS | 4.4K IOPS |
(*) Maximum Delivered values measured over a 1 minute period. Sustained write performance differs from maximum delivered performance. Over time, wear-leveling and erase operations are required and impact write performance levels.
Latency Measurements
The Sun Storage F5100 Flash Array is tuned for 4 KB or larger IO sizes, the write service for IOs smaller than 4 KB can be 10 times more than shown in the table below. It should also be noted that the service times shown below are both the latency and the time to transfer the data. This becomes the dominant portion the the service time for IOs over 64 KB in size.
| Transfer Size | Service Time (ms) | |
|---|---|---|
| Read | Write | |
| 4 KB | 0.41 | 0.28 |
| 8 KB | 0.42 | 0.35 |
| 16 KB | 0.45 | 0.72 |
| 32 KB | 0.51 | 0.77 |
| 64 KB | 0.63 | 1.52 |
| 128 KB | 0.87 | 2.99 |
| 256 KB | 1.34 | 6.03 |
| 512 KB | 2.29 | 12.14 |
| 1024 KB | 4.19 | 23.79 |
- Latencies are measured application latencies via vdbench tool.
- Please note that the F5100 Flash Array
is a 4KB sector device. Doing IOs of less than
4KB in size, or not aligned on 4KB boundaries, can result in a significant
performance degradations on write operations.
Results and Configuration Summary
Storage:
- Sun Storage F5100 Flash Array
- 80 Flash Modules
16 ports
4 domains (20 Flash Modules per)
CAM zoning - 5 Flash Modules per port
Servers:
- 4 x Sun SPARC Enterprise T5240
4 x 4 HBAs each, firmware version 01.27.03.00-IT
Software:
- OpenSolaris 2009.06 or Solaris 10 10/09 (MPT driver enhancements)
Vdbench 5.0
Required Flash Array Patches SPARC, ses/sgen patch 138128-01 or later & mpt patch 141736-05
Required Flash Array Patches x86, ses/sgen patch 138129-01 or later & mpt patch 141737-05
Benchmark Description
Sun measured a wide variety of IO performance metrics on the Sun Storage F5100 Flash Array using Vdbench 5.0 measuring 100% Random Read, 100% Random Write, 100% Sequential Read, 100% Sequential Write, and 50-50 read/write. This demonstrates the maximum performance and throughput of the storage system.
Vdbench profile parmfile.txt here
Vdbench is publicly available for download at: http://vdbench.org
Key Points and Best Practices
- Drive each Flash Modules with 32 outstanding IO as shown in the benchmark profile above.
- LSI HBA firmware level should be at Phase 15 maxq.
- LSI HBAs either use single port HBAs or only 1 port per HBA.
- SPARC platforms will align with the 4K boundary size set by the Flash Array. x86/windows platforms don't necessarily have this alignment built in and can show lower performance
See Also
- Vdbench is publicly available for download at: http://vdbench.org
- Firmware obtained from http://www.lsi.com/support/sun
Disclosure Statement
Sun Storage F5100 Flash Array delivered 1.6M 4K read IOPS and 12.8 GB/sec sequential read. Vdbench 5.0 (http://vdbench.org) was used for the test. Results as of September 12, 2009.