|
Write
Accelerator Product Highlights
• The World's Fastest Storage®
•
Accelerates Oracle redo logs, temporary tablespaces,
and
undo logs, as well as similar components of SQL Server and
other databases
•
Directly attached to database
servers, network attached, or deployed in
a storage area network
•
Recognized by the OS as just
another disk drive
•
Write Accelerator frees up servers
and boosts performance.
The Write Accelerator from Texas Memory
Systems accelerates write-intensive Oracle databases.
The
Write Accelerator is specifically designed to increase Oracle database
performance. It accelerates Oracle databases by allowing them to
handle substantially greater transaction volumes and add more concurrent
users. The Write Accelerator can deliver many times the performance
of a standard cached-RAID array and is more easily installed and
managed by enterprises whose operations rely on Oracle-resident
applications.
The Write Accelerator works on a simple premise: performance of
write intensive databases is limited by two factors – latency
and throughput. The Write Accelerator, a special edition RamSan
solid state disk solution, offers unparalleled latency and throughput
and unbinds Oracle applications limited by slow writes.
Solutions designed to accelerate writes must meet three requirements:
tightly integrate with the operating systems that run Oracle, support
Oracle and Oracle ASM, and follow Oracle’s stripe and mirror
everything (SAME) rule. The Write Accelerator supports Oracle
in Windows, Linux, Solaris, HP-UX, OpenVMS, and AIX environments,
among others. The systems have been deployed with Oracle databases
from Oracle 8i to Oracle 11g, including support for Oracle RAC and
Oracle ASM. The Write Accelerator consists of two separate
but bundled units, enabling complete support for SAME and allowing
even the most demanding enterprises in the world 5-nines reliability
for the solution.
The Write Accelerator can be directly attached to Oracle database
servers or attached to storage networking components. Special
skills or training are not required to install and administer a
Write Accelerator. Administrators simply move their redo logs, undo
segments, or temporary tablespaces to the Write Accelerator.
Neither the Oracle database itself nor the operating system need
to be modified to support the Write Accelerator.
“Write activity in Oracle is mostly a factor of the performance
of the redo logs, undo segments, and temporary tablespaces,”
says Mike Ault, Oracle Guru at Texas Memory Systems and author of
more than 20 books on Oracle performance and tuning-related topics.
“By moving these files to the Write Accelerator, application
performance is boosted as server resources are made available to
support more transactions and more concurrent users. Plugging it
in is easier, more effective, and less costly than adding additional
RAID arrays or constantly tuning the database.”
Product Highlights
Performance
The Write Accelerator connects to servers or network fabrics through
basic Fibre Channel or InfiniBand interfaces and appears simply
as a very fast disk to the network, able to act as any disk or storage
system might. The Write Accelerator acheives dramatic performance
gains in Oracle redo logs, temporary tablespaces, and undo segments.
Reliability
The Write Accelerator solution incorporates two individual solid
state disk systems mirrored in host-side or Oracle ASM configurations,
providing the highest degree of data protection and system reliability.
In addition, each individual unit of the Write Accelerator solution
includes multiple reliability features, including hot swappable
power supplies and backup hard disks, redundant cooling fans, batteries,
and optional redundant failover data ports. ChipKill technology,
ECC and soft error scrubbing, and Active Backup, as noted below,
are also part of the Write Accelerator’s suite of sophisticated
reliability features.
Interoperability
The Write Accelerator is designed to look like a disk to the network.
It is highly interoperable and works in virtually any enterprise
environment. It is installed in numerous environments, including
AIX, Solaris, HP-UX, OpenVMS, Tandem, Linux, and Windows. Hardware
from Fibre Channel and InfiniBand vendors including Cisco, Emulex,
Brocade, McData, Mellanox, QLogic, LSI Logic, and ATTO easily interoperates
with the Write Accelerator.
Active Backup
The Write Accelerator includes the reliability and fuctionality
of Active Backup®. Other SSDs and cache systems can only "destage"
data from RAM to backup disks once power is already lost. This means
that data is never backed up during normal operation and the time-to-complete-backup
after power loss is unacceptably long. A Write Accelerator with
Active Backup can continuously back up data on RAM to the internal
backup hard disks without impacting performance. This means in an
emergency situation data is anywhere from 60-100% on the backup
hard drives already.
Chipkill Technology
Write Accelerator systems take reliability even farther by implementing
IBM Chipkill technology. Standard error correcting code (ECC) implementations
correct single-bit data errors in memory chips but cannot correct
the multi-bit errors that can result in data integrity issues. Chipkill
technology allows a memory system to correct a multi-bit failure
up to and including a total chip failure.
Soft Error Scrubbing
All solid state disks can correct a single bit error before sending
data to the server as a part of their ECC protection. The Write
Accelerator, however, goes a step further by scrubbing, re-writing
the corrected data to memory and then verifying the re-write to
determine if a memory chip has a failure (a hard error) or if radiation
transients caused the single bit error (a soft error). Systems that
do not scrub single bit memory errors will either a) report errors
to a system log that will eventually encourage replacement of a
memory board or b) hide these errors thus leaving a potentially
unsafe memory board in the system. Research on this topic suggests
that 90% of single bit errors are soft errors. In these cases, the
Write Accelerator will correct the error through the scrubbing process
and prevent unnecessary downtime to replace the memory board.
Product
Specifications
I/Os Per Second
• 200,000 read and write
Capacity
•
16-32
GB
Bandwidth
•
1.5
GB per second
Latency
•
Less
than 15 microseconds
Fibre Channel Connection
•
4-Gigabit
Fibre Channel (2-Gigabit capable)
•
2
ports standard; up to 4 ports available
•
Supports
point-to-point, arbitrated loop, and switched fabric topologies
•
Interoperable
with Fibre Channel Host Bus Adaptors, switches, and operating systems
InfiniBand Connection
•
4x
InfiniBand (10-Gigabit)
•
1
port standard; up to 2 ports available
•
Supports
SRP upper level protocol
•
Interoperable
with InfiniBand Host Channel Adaptors, switches, and operating systems
Management
•
Browser-enabled
system monitoring, management, and configuration
•
Telnet
management capability
•
Front
panel displays system status and provides basic management functionality
LUN Support
•
1
to 1024 LUNs with variable capacity per LUN
•
Flexible
assignment of LUNs to ports
•
Hardware
LUN masking
Data Retention
•
Non-volatile
solid state disk
•
Redundant
internal batteries power the system for 25 minutes after power loss
•
Automatically
backs up data to disk at 60 MB/sec
Reliability and Availability
•
Chipkill
technology protects data against memory errors up to
and includingloss of an entire memory chip
•
Internal
redundancies
- Power supplies and fans
- Backup battery power
- Backup hard disk drives (mirrored)
•
Hot-swappable
components
- Two backup hard drives (front access)
- Power supplies
•
Soft
Error Scrubbing
- When a single bit error occurs on a read, the RamSan
will
automatically re-write the data to
memory thus scrubbing soft errors.
Following
the re-write the system re-reads to verify the data is
corrected.
Backup Procedures
Supports two backup modes that are configurable per system or per
LUN:
•
Data
Sync mode - synchronizes data to redundant internal disk drives
before
shutdown or with power loss
|