Lab Validation
By Vinny Choinski, Senior ESG Lab Analyst, and Kerry Dolan, ESG Research Analyst
Report
SanDisk FlashSoft
Active Data Management
August 2012
© 2012 by The Enterprise Strategy Group, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Lab Validation: SanDisk FlashSoft 2
Contents
Introduction .................................................................................................................................................. 3
Background ............................................................................................................................................................... 3
ESG Lab Validation ........................................................................................................................................ 5
Getting Started ......................................................................................................................................................... 5
Manageability ........................................................................................................................................................... 7
Application Performance ........................................................................................................................................ 11
Density Scale ........................................................................................................................................................... 13
ESG Lab Validation Highlights ..................................................................................................................... 15
Issues to Consider ....................................................................................................................................... 15
The Bigger Truth ......................................................................................................................................... 16
Appendix ..................................................................................................................................................... 17
ESG Lab Reports
The goal of ESG Lab reports is to educate IT professionals about data center technology products for
companies of all types and sizes. ESG Lab reports are not meant to replace the evaluation process that should
be conducted before making purchasing decisions, but rather to provide insight into these emerging
technologies. Our objective is to go over some of the more valuable feature/functions of products, show how
they can be used to solve real customer problems, and identify any areas needing improvement. ESG Lab’s
expert third-party perspective is based on its own hands-on testing as well as on interviews with customers
who use these products in production environments. This ESG Lab report was sponsored by SanDisk.
All trademark names are property of their respective companies. Information contained in this publication has been obtained by sources The Enterprise
Strategy Group (ESG) considers to be reliable but is not warranted by ESG. This publication may contain opinions of ESG, which are subject to change from
time to time. This publication is copyrighted by The Enterprise Strategy Group, Inc. Any reproduction or redistribution of this publication, in whole or in
part, whether in hard-copy format, electronically, or otherwise to persons not authorized to receive it, without the express consent of The Enterprise
Strategy Group, Inc., is in violation of U.S. copyright law and will be subject to an action for civil damages and, if applicable, criminal prosecution. Should
you have any questions, please contact ESG Client Relations at 508.482.0188.
© 2012 by The Enterprise Strategy Group, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Lab Validation: SanDisk FlashSoft 3
Reduced/deferred hardware
Improved total cost of ownership
Improved SLAs
Reduced operational expenses
Improved resource utilization
Reduced power consumption
Improved application performance
Current solid-
Potential
Introduction
This report documents the results of ESG Lab testing of SanDisk FlashSoft for VMware vSphere software. Testing
focused on application performance, virtual machine (VM) density scalability, and ease of integration into a
VMware environment.
Background
Organizations are increasingly deploying solid-state drives (SSD) in their data centers. Recent ESG research
uncovered what benefits SSD users are experiencing as well as what benefits potential users hope to achieve. As
Figure 1 shows, improving application performance is at the top of both lists, followed by reducing power
consumption, improving resource utilization, and reducing operational expenses.
Figure 1. Benefits of Solid-state Storage, Actual (Current Users) vs. Expected (Potential Adopters)
Which of the following benefits has your organization realized – or does it
expect to realize – as the result of deploying solid-state storage technology?
(Percent of respondents, multiple responses accepted)
1
52%
69%
42%
45%
36%
34%
state storage
users (N=91)
36%
35%
32%
23%
solid-state
storage
adopters
(N=132)
30%
(TCO)
31%
22%
capital expenditures
0% 20% 40% 60% 80%
32%
Source: Enterprise Strategy Group, 2011
SSDs can deliver orders-of-magnitude improvements in I/O over traditional hard disk drives (HDDs), offering
organizations the opportunity to reduce storage bottlenecks, speed application performance, and minimize latency.
While these features are beneficial in physical server environments, they become crucial in virtualized
environments in which workloads are aggregated and I/O becomes increasingly randomized. The challenge for
many organizations is to know how to apply SSD for maximum benefit. Identifying what applications and data will
be “hot” at what time and for how long is difficult at best, and as a result, manually assigning SSD to specific
applications or VMs is a hit-or-miss proposition.
1
Source: ESG Research Report, Solid-state Storage Market Trends, November 2011.
© 2012 by The Enterprise Strategy Group, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Lab Validation: SanDisk FlashSoft 4
SanDisk FlashSoft for VMware vSphere
FlashSoft for VMware vSphere is a software module designed to accelerate application performance in VMware
guest machines on a physical server. FlashSoft increases the performance of I/O operations in VMware
environments by creating a software-based read cache using virtualized SSD capacity; SSD is dynamically allocated
to accelerate virtual disks (VMDKs) as needed. This increase in I/O performance also enables greater virtual
machine density. No agents are used in the guest OS, and the software requires less than 10MB of disk space to
install and less than 140MB of system memory at runtime. Because FlashSoft is software-based, the cache can
consist of any SSD memory device connected via PCIe, SAS, or SATA interfaces, and SSDs can reside in the server or
outside of it. FlashSoft can accelerate data in DAS, SAN, or NAS-based data stores without restriction.
FlashSoft is installed quickly using the standard vSphere Installation Bundle (VIB), and it runs as a block-level file
device switch (FDS) loadable module in the ESX kernel (see Figure 2). This software module requires no changes to
the storage configuration, and it operates in the ESX cluster without restrictions. FlashSoft for VMware vSphere is
managed through a vCenter console plug-in and supports all native VMware functionality including high availability,
vMotion, Storage vMotion, snapshots, clones, linked clones, and VDI. It can be installed in some or all servers in a
cluster, and it can accelerate the VMDKs of any servers in which it is installed. Acceleration can selectively be
started and stopped on any VMDK individually.
Figure 2. SanDisk FlashSoft Software
FlashSoft accelerates VMDKs on VMFS or NFS storage. When FlashSoft is installed on servers running multiple
virtual machines, the cache space on the SSD is shared dynamically among the VMs. During read activity, all data
passes through the FlashSoft driver in the storage stack; FlashSoft identifies the most frequently used data and
caches it on SSD. In many cases, while only a small percentage of a total data set is “hot,” it can account for 70% to
80% of server I/O. As a result, implementing a relatively small SSD-based cache for frequently accessed data can
provide dramatic performance improvements and eliminate the need to store all of an application’s data on SSD.
© 2012 by The Enterprise Strategy Group, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Lab Validation: SanDisk FlashSoft 5
ESG Lab Validation
ESG Lab validated prior performance testing and performed remote hands-on evaluation of a FlashSoft
implementation via a lab located at the Milpitas, California, SanDisk facility. Using industry-standard tools and
methodologies, ESG Lab conducted testing that was designed to demonstrate integration with VMware features,
ease of management, performance scalability, and the ability to increase virtual machine density.
Getting Started
The test bed consisted of one Dell R810 server with VMware ESX, one Dell R720 server with VMware ESX, and two
Dell R710 servers in an ESX cluster. These hosts were configured with 180GB of LSI WarpDrive PCIe SSD storage. All
servers were connected via iSCSI SAN to a storage array with 24 x 15K RPM SAS drives. The VMware vCenter
Management Interface was connected via LAN to the vSphere server.
Figure 3. FlashSoft Test Bed
ESG Lab Testing
Installing the FlashSoft application into a VMware ESX cluster was extremely simple, and the task was performed
without disruption to the cluster. First, using VMware vMotion, the virtual machines were moved from the first Dell
R710 node to the second. Next, the FlashSoft ESX kernel module was installed on the first host (now containing no
VMs). Following that step, the VMs were moved back to node 1 using vMotion, and FlashSoft was then installed on
the second Dell R710. Service from the cluster was not interrupted at any point during installation. Figure 4 shows
output from the command line interface as install file uncompression and installation was occurring.
© 2012 by The Enterprise Strategy Group, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Lab Validation: SanDisk FlashSoft 6
Figure 4. Installation Procedure
When the installation was complete, a FlashSoft tab appeared in the vCenter console. Figure 5 shows the vCenter
dashboard view. The “Status of the system” box shows that SSDs and licenses are all set for the ESX cluster. In the
“Utilization” area, cache read hits and misses are beginning to be displayed, and in the SSD area, the device name
and size appear.
Figure 5. VMware vCenter FlashSoft Management
© 2012 by The Enterprise Strategy Group, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
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