FS1 - a big smart flash drive from Oracle
In July 2001, investment company Taco Ventures, owned by Larry Ellison, invested in the creation of Pillar Data Systems - the manufacturer of network storage systems for medium and large businesses. The company has established itself in the market with the Axiom product line, it directly competed with EMC Corporation, Hitachi Data Systems and other manufacturers of network storages and storage network equipment.
After the company had been in the market for 10 years, Oracle acquired Pillar to transfer its intellectual property to its own industrial equipment. The result was the Oracle FS1 data storage system (Fig. 1) —multi-purpose network flash storage. And this is such a cool thing that it deserves a separate article.
The current system version is FS1-2 (one cluster, two controllers). In general, the FS1 system may consist of 1–8 clusters, that is, 2–16 controllers. The controllers are scaled both horizontally, in terms of increasing their number, and vertically - by the number of drives installed in the system.
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The current version of the FS1-2 controllers are of two versions - basic and high-performance. Each controller pair of both versions is based on four Intel Xeon E5-2620 processors (24 cores, 2.0 GHz clock speed), and can have 4–12 ports: 16 Gbps FC, 10 Gbps NAS, and iSCSI 10 Gbit / s Pairs of HBA adapters can be installed in any combination - at the user's choice. The base controller carries four ports of 6 Gbit / s SAS-2 as standard, optionally eight; high-performance - 12. As for the memory used for data caching - in the basic version of the controllers it can be up to 80 GB (64 GB DDR3 DRAM and 16 GB DDR3 NVDIMM), in high-performance - 416 GB (384 GB and 32 GB, respectively).
The combination of such capacities allows the system in a high-performance configuration of 16 controllers to achieve performance up to 2 million IOPS and data transfer rates up to 80 GB / s, while supporting a full set of data functionality that does not require separate licensing, as well as synchronous and asynchronous replication with journaling support CDP, as a time point level, and with application support.
All this wonderful “hardware” can be supplied to the customer as in a rack (in this case, the components are installed in the rack, connected by cables, tested and shipped as a fully equipped, ready-to-work system), and not in the rack (after all the components installed, cabled and tested in a rack, they are removed from the rack and delivered in individual packaging for installation in the customer's own rack).
To optimize the cost of I / O operations, a QoS Plus engine developed by Oracle is a system-based policy software with virtualization functions that controls the queue for performing I / O operations based on business priorities and uses automatic separation into logical volume levels (LUNs) based on simple templates. QoS Plus collects detailed information about storage usage, evaluates which data items need to be transferred to a particular storage level, and automatically transfers data to the most efficient media (flash drive or hard disk) to optimize the cost of a single I / O operation taking into account the usage profile and the importance of this data for the business. Today it is the most efficient system on the market.
The system can operate in “SAN only” modes (using a 16 Gbps Fiber Channel connection), “NAS only”, as well as in intermediate modes (see Table 1).
FS1 is an intelligent data storage system; it uses special profiles that are optimal for various applications and their parts. Some of the profiles for Oracle Database and key corporate applications, including applications from other manufacturers, including Microsoft, are pre-configured in advance - only about 30 different profiles. You can choose at what level of drives the applications will be initially oriented, and determine the level of service. The system allows you to separate database components, such as index files, database tables, archive logs, transaction logs, control files, and temporary files, so that when you allocate resources, the performance of the Oracle Database is automatically optimized without a detailed analysis of the database components. Users can create new profiles, modify existing ones, export all profiles to other systems in order to standardize the allocation of resources across data centers. The system allows you to group different profiles according to the degree of priority, thereby delimiting the input-output between different systems.
Another strong feature of the FS1 system is data storage domains, or virtual data storage systems within the same physical system FS1. Each data storage domain is a “data container” that isolates data from other data storage domains. This ensures their independence in shared private or public cloud environments, compliance with regulatory requirements, or implementation of refund models. Storage domains consist of RAID-groups of SSD / HDD drives in any combination. The storage domain physically isolates the data and eliminates the need for sharing the resources of the drives with other data. This eliminates the common problem of "noisy neighbors." You can allocate up to 64 storage domains per FS1-2 system. RAID groups and disk classes can be easily reconfigured, so you can optimize the performance of the storage domain, either manually or by assigning this task to the system itself by assigning the desired storage profile to each LUN. Assigning a storage profile is done literally with one click of the mouse, saving adminstrators from significant time-consuming and frequent routine activities.
Storage domains allow you to customize QoS Plus software for different environments, with all storage domains still on the same physical system FS1. You can allocate certain drive resources for critical applications, thereby protecting their performance. For archives, you can select separate drives with a lower unit cost per 1 TB, separate types of drives, and even separate storage domains.
As for drives, I will not bore you with complete information on the number and parameters of solid-state devices and hard drives that are placed on the FS1 disk shelf. I'll be brief - various combinations of high-performance SSD drives with a capacity of 400 GB and 1.6 TB capacity, fast disks with a capacity of 300 GB and 900 GB (spindle speed - 10 thousand rpm) are supported, as well as hard drives with a capacity of 4 TB ( 7200 rpm.).
As a result, the system scales up to 912 TB of flash drives and up to 2.9 PB of disk space. In terms of capacity and speed, FS1 drives are divided into high-performance flash SSDs, high-capacity flash SSDs, high-performance hard drives, and high-capacity hard drives. This classification is used by QoS Plus software when it selects storage levels for certain data. Thus, up to 4 physical levels are admissible for any LUN. In addition, given the use of an online mechanism for changing the RAID level depending on performance requirements, each RAID group can be in two states: RAID5 \ RAID10 or RAID6 \ RAID10, the logical levels at which a unit volume can be located can be up to 8. The data format chosen by Oracle for the FS1 system uses data blocks of 640 KB each, and this is hundreds of times smaller than that of competitors — for example, blocks of 42 MB or even gigabyte blocks in arrays of a number of other manufacturers. Small blocks are much more efficient for transferring and storing data. The block size of 640 K is even more efficient than the approach proposed by a number of other manufacturers using 4K blocks (recall that the page size of the disk is 64K and the page size for the flash is 128K).
Let us see how this works (Fig. 2). To transfer data, you need to analyze and mark the data for transfer. When many applications are running on different servers, and all data needs to be consolidated, the storage system changes the I / O request execution priorities and aligns the queues of data blocks according to one of the five priorities — Premium, High, Medium, Low, and Archive — assigned to each logical volume and, accordingly, each application. Accordingly, you can, in the simplest case, split one physical system into two data storage domains - a high-performance domain containing only SSD drives for critical applications, and a low-priority domain consisting of any hard drives as an archive for different systems.
Of course, the FS1 system is designed to work with Oracle Database and Oracle applications, it allows you to use unique Oracle Database features such as, for example, HCC hybrid column compression, and has the functionality of quickly allocating storage resources for Oracle Database applications. The system is also compatible with HP UX, AIX, Windows, Solaris, Linux, VMware, that is, with virtually all existing de facto market-standard operating environments.
Thus, the Oracle FS1 system is designed to squeeze the maximum performance out of existing technologies, to the maximum extent using the capabilities of all technologies related to data storage and processing. Thanks to the concepts of storage domain, service level and flash memory performance, the target SLA level is achieved. When scaling to FS1-16, the controllers will connect via the high-speed switched InfiniBand computer bus, respectively, the controllers will be running in Active-Active mode.
FS1 is perfectly integrated with Oracle and Oracle Database applications. Prepared profiles for various applications, including Fusion, Siebel, Microsoft application servers. Mobile versions of the administration applications FS1-2 released for iOS and Android.
Overall, FS1 is objectively one of the best solutions of this class in the world. I am sure that those who will administer it will get real pleasure from work.
After the company had been in the market for 10 years, Oracle acquired Pillar to transfer its intellectual property to its own industrial equipment. The result was the Oracle FS1 data storage system (Fig. 1) —multi-purpose network flash storage. And this is such a cool thing that it deserves a separate article.
The current system version is FS1-2 (one cluster, two controllers). In general, the FS1 system may consist of 1–8 clusters, that is, 2–16 controllers. The controllers are scaled both horizontally, in terms of increasing their number, and vertically - by the number of drives installed in the system.
')
The current version of the FS1-2 controllers are of two versions - basic and high-performance. Each controller pair of both versions is based on four Intel Xeon E5-2620 processors (24 cores, 2.0 GHz clock speed), and can have 4–12 ports: 16 Gbps FC, 10 Gbps NAS, and iSCSI 10 Gbit / s Pairs of HBA adapters can be installed in any combination - at the user's choice. The base controller carries four ports of 6 Gbit / s SAS-2 as standard, optionally eight; high-performance - 12. As for the memory used for data caching - in the basic version of the controllers it can be up to 80 GB (64 GB DDR3 DRAM and 16 GB DDR3 NVDIMM), in high-performance - 416 GB (384 GB and 32 GB, respectively).
The combination of such capacities allows the system in a high-performance configuration of 16 controllers to achieve performance up to 2 million IOPS and data transfer rates up to 80 GB / s, while supporting a full set of data functionality that does not require separate licensing, as well as synchronous and asynchronous replication with journaling support CDP, as a time point level, and with application support.
All this wonderful “hardware” can be supplied to the customer as in a rack (in this case, the components are installed in the rack, connected by cables, tested and shipped as a fully equipped, ready-to-work system), and not in the rack (after all the components installed, cabled and tested in a rack, they are removed from the rack and delivered in individual packaging for installation in the customer's own rack).
To optimize the cost of I / O operations, a QoS Plus engine developed by Oracle is a system-based policy software with virtualization functions that controls the queue for performing I / O operations based on business priorities and uses automatic separation into logical volume levels (LUNs) based on simple templates. QoS Plus collects detailed information about storage usage, evaluates which data items need to be transferred to a particular storage level, and automatically transfers data to the most efficient media (flash drive or hard disk) to optimize the cost of a single I / O operation taking into account the usage profile and the importance of this data for the business. Today it is the most efficient system on the market.
The system can operate in “SAN only” modes (using a 16 Gbps Fiber Channel connection), “NAS only”, as well as in intermediate modes (see Table 1).
| Configuration Name | SAN | NAS |
| SAN Only | 100% | 0% |
| SAN Biased | 70% | thirty% |
| NAS Biased | thirty% | 70% |
| NAS Only | 0% | 100% |
FS1 is an intelligent data storage system; it uses special profiles that are optimal for various applications and their parts. Some of the profiles for Oracle Database and key corporate applications, including applications from other manufacturers, including Microsoft, are pre-configured in advance - only about 30 different profiles. You can choose at what level of drives the applications will be initially oriented, and determine the level of service. The system allows you to separate database components, such as index files, database tables, archive logs, transaction logs, control files, and temporary files, so that when you allocate resources, the performance of the Oracle Database is automatically optimized without a detailed analysis of the database components. Users can create new profiles, modify existing ones, export all profiles to other systems in order to standardize the allocation of resources across data centers. The system allows you to group different profiles according to the degree of priority, thereby delimiting the input-output between different systems.
Another strong feature of the FS1 system is data storage domains, or virtual data storage systems within the same physical system FS1. Each data storage domain is a “data container” that isolates data from other data storage domains. This ensures their independence in shared private or public cloud environments, compliance with regulatory requirements, or implementation of refund models. Storage domains consist of RAID-groups of SSD / HDD drives in any combination. The storage domain physically isolates the data and eliminates the need for sharing the resources of the drives with other data. This eliminates the common problem of "noisy neighbors." You can allocate up to 64 storage domains per FS1-2 system. RAID groups and disk classes can be easily reconfigured, so you can optimize the performance of the storage domain, either manually or by assigning this task to the system itself by assigning the desired storage profile to each LUN. Assigning a storage profile is done literally with one click of the mouse, saving adminstrators from significant time-consuming and frequent routine activities.
Storage domains allow you to customize QoS Plus software for different environments, with all storage domains still on the same physical system FS1. You can allocate certain drive resources for critical applications, thereby protecting their performance. For archives, you can select separate drives with a lower unit cost per 1 TB, separate types of drives, and even separate storage domains.
As for drives, I will not bore you with complete information on the number and parameters of solid-state devices and hard drives that are placed on the FS1 disk shelf. I'll be brief - various combinations of high-performance SSD drives with a capacity of 400 GB and 1.6 TB capacity, fast disks with a capacity of 300 GB and 900 GB (spindle speed - 10 thousand rpm) are supported, as well as hard drives with a capacity of 4 TB ( 7200 rpm.).
As a result, the system scales up to 912 TB of flash drives and up to 2.9 PB of disk space. In terms of capacity and speed, FS1 drives are divided into high-performance flash SSDs, high-capacity flash SSDs, high-performance hard drives, and high-capacity hard drives. This classification is used by QoS Plus software when it selects storage levels for certain data. Thus, up to 4 physical levels are admissible for any LUN. In addition, given the use of an online mechanism for changing the RAID level depending on performance requirements, each RAID group can be in two states: RAID5 \ RAID10 or RAID6 \ RAID10, the logical levels at which a unit volume can be located can be up to 8. The data format chosen by Oracle for the FS1 system uses data blocks of 640 KB each, and this is hundreds of times smaller than that of competitors — for example, blocks of 42 MB or even gigabyte blocks in arrays of a number of other manufacturers. Small blocks are much more efficient for transferring and storing data. The block size of 640 K is even more efficient than the approach proposed by a number of other manufacturers using 4K blocks (recall that the page size of the disk is 64K and the page size for the flash is 128K).
Let us see how this works (Fig. 2). To transfer data, you need to analyze and mark the data for transfer. When many applications are running on different servers, and all data needs to be consolidated, the storage system changes the I / O request execution priorities and aligns the queues of data blocks according to one of the five priorities — Premium, High, Medium, Low, and Archive — assigned to each logical volume and, accordingly, each application. Accordingly, you can, in the simplest case, split one physical system into two data storage domains - a high-performance domain containing only SSD drives for critical applications, and a low-priority domain consisting of any hard drives as an archive for different systems.
Of course, the FS1 system is designed to work with Oracle Database and Oracle applications, it allows you to use unique Oracle Database features such as, for example, HCC hybrid column compression, and has the functionality of quickly allocating storage resources for Oracle Database applications. The system is also compatible with HP UX, AIX, Windows, Solaris, Linux, VMware, that is, with virtually all existing de facto market-standard operating environments.
Thus, the Oracle FS1 system is designed to squeeze the maximum performance out of existing technologies, to the maximum extent using the capabilities of all technologies related to data storage and processing. Thanks to the concepts of storage domain, service level and flash memory performance, the target SLA level is achieved. When scaling to FS1-16, the controllers will connect via the high-speed switched InfiniBand computer bus, respectively, the controllers will be running in Active-Active mode.
FS1 is perfectly integrated with Oracle and Oracle Database applications. Prepared profiles for various applications, including Fusion, Siebel, Microsoft application servers. Mobile versions of the administration applications FS1-2 released for iOS and Android.
Overall, FS1 is objectively one of the best solutions of this class in the world. I am sure that those who will administer it will get real pleasure from work.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/262899/
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