SanDisk Membrain Software User Manual
WHITE PAPER
Delivers breakthrough
10x server consoli dation
Membrain Software
Enterprise cache. Built for flash.
Synopsis
Membrain is mission-critical cache. Increase the density of cache to power server consolidation,
reduce power consumption and lower overall total cost of ownership (TCO). Boost response
times for critical applications with in-memory like performance. Learn more in this white paper.
Table of Contents
Introduction ..............................................................................................................................................1
Memcached Overview .........................................................................................................................2
Membrain Architecture .......................................................................................................................2
Hardware Platform ...........................................................................................................................2
The SanDisk Operating Environment (SOE) ..........................................................................2
Memcached Client/Server Protocol ...........................................................................................3
SanDisk Data Fabric .........................................................................................................................3
Flash Management ...........................................................................................................................3
Flash and Network Management ................................................................................................4
Administration .........................................................................................................................................4
Key Capabilities ......................................................................................................................................4
Using Flash Memory to Increase Capacity, Reduce Power, and Provide Persistence .......4
Using Replication and Automated Failover for HA and Disaster Recovery ...............6
Using Backup and Restore to Protect Against Data Corruption or Loss ....................7
Using Containers to Manage Consolidation ...........................................................................8
Using Cloning to Rapidly Deploy and Warm Identical Membrain Nodes ...................8
Using Administrative Services to Deploy, Management, and Scale ..............................9
Network Configuration ...................................................................................................................9
Enhanced Memcached Statistics ..............................................................................................10
Putting It All Together: Membrain Use Cases .......................................................................... 10
Reducing TCO through Consolidation ....................................................................................10
Industry-Leading Data and Service Availability ........................................................................ 11
Summary ................................................................................................................................................. 12
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Introduction
With the explosive growth of high-volume web sites, software-as-a-service (SaaS), cloud
computing, and other emerging web-based applications, datacenter workloads have increased
exponentially. The business opportunities that are created from the deployment of these
new applications are substantial, but the demands they place on the datacenter are daunting.
Challenges include unprecedented data growth, large increases in rack space and power consumption, too much time-sensitive data to process in a rapid and consistent manner, inability
to effectively scale to meet demand, underutilized resources, and severe space,
power, and budget constraints.
A software cache and / or persistent key-value store is now a key part of the software infrastructure of many datacenters. Unfortunately, the traditional caching solutions (such as the
widely used Memcached protocol) and key-value store products are loosely coupled and lack
overall optimization. These products do not adequately address the performance, capacity,
scaling, availability, and power challenges of supporting new Web applications effectively.
Huge advances in multi-core processors, flash memory, and high-performance networking
offer huge improvements in performance and power at the component level. But these new
component technologies are severely underutilized when datacenters integrate them at the
data-access tier. Serious scaling, performance, power, networking, space, and complexity
issues still remain.
To address these challenges and opportunities, new system architectures and solutions that
match the workload, operating environments, and hardware are needed. SanDisk has taken
a breakthrough, holistic approach to harness these powerful technology advances to create
Membrain: a breakthrough software cache and persistent NoSQL key-value store optimized
to take full advantage of flash memory, multi-core processors, and high-performance
interconnects.
Membrain is a high-performance, highly available, cost-effective, and scalable solution that
meets today’s demanding data-access needs. Relative to traditional Memcached and the other
NoSQL key-value stores, Membrain delivers order-of-magnitude improvements in performance,
scaling, downtime, power, and space, while cutting total cost of ownership (TCO) by more than
half. The net result is more efficient and highly-available datacenter operations and the ability
to create new revenue-producing business opportunities based on rapid access to terabytescale data.
Membrain powers production workloads in leading Web facing, SaaS, cloud, and enterprise
datacenters today. Membrain offers, among other things, the following unique features:
Industry-leading throughput, capacity, and data and service availability by tightly integrating
the Memcached protocol with the innovative SanDisk Operating Environment (SOE) and
standard server and flash memory, significantly reducing capital expense, power consumption, rack space, and networking requirements;
Comprehensive data and service availability through a rich set of high-availability/disaster-
recovery (HA/DR) features, including Persistent Caching, Active/Active Replication, RAID,
and Backup & Restore; and
100% memcapable compatibility with all existing Memcached client libraries, applications,
and tools, making it easy to integrate into existing environments.
SanDisk customers highly value the consolidation and TCO savings afforded by Membrain. For
example, using Membrain instead of traditional DRAM-only caching brought a social networking
company a 10:1 reduction in the number of servers and a media company a 12:1 reduction in
the number of servers needed to service the same workload. Membrain customers enjoy large
savings in TCO, power, space, and application complexity.
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The industry-leading data and service availability provided by Membrain is a key benefit valued
by its users. Some SanDisk customers use Membrain as their sole data repository, without a
database as the primary data store. For these customers, the comprehensive data and service
availability of Membrain is critical. For example, a SanDisk telecom customer stores all the
address books for users of mobile and cable services in Membrain servers. They configure the
Membrain nodes with transparent replication and automatic failover, and they use the Membrain
Backup/Restore facility for periodic backups for recovery from disasters and less catastrophic
forms of data corruption, such as those caused by client application defects.
The rest of this white paper describes: Memcached; the architecture of Membrain; the key capabilities of Membrain; and use cases for Membrain. We conclude with a summary of key points.
Memcached Overview
Memcached is a distributed key-value caching is widely used in high-traffic Web sites.
Memcached is generic, providing caching for arbitrary chunks of data such as results from
database calls or page renderings. Memcached is proliferating because of its effectiveness at
off-loading database and application servers, with dramatic improvement in Web site response
time and throughput.
Memcached is based on a standard client/server protocol which is maintained by the
Memcached open-source community, which also maintains various client libraries, a reference
server implementation, and management, administrative and compliance tools.
Membrain Architecture
Membrain seamlessly integrates the Memcached protocol with the SanDisk Operating
Environment (SOE) (described later in this white paper) and the underlying hardware platform
to provide superior enterprise caching and key-value store performance, capabilities, and
features.
Membrain is based on a system architecture that holistically manages state-of-the-art, enterprise-class flash memory, multi-core processors, DRAM, and high-performance networking to
optimize the performance, availability, and TCO of the Memcached client/server protocol. This
architecture was created based on extensive workload characterization, system modeling, and
optimization. The result is a highly optimized cache/key value store that effectively harnesses
these powerful technologies to provide a solution that is scalable, smart, cost-effective, and
green. Web facing datacenters can now leverage the advanced technology of SanDisk’s tightly
integrated solution to quickly and easily manage data growth, decrease business complexity,
and cut TCO.
Hardware Platform
Membrain runs standard x86 servers with flash memory. The recommended hardware platform is:
Dell, HP, or IBM x86 server or blade with at least 64GB of DRAM
PCI-e enterprise flash memory or at least 5 SATA/SAS SSDs
A single 10Gb or multiple 1-Gb Ethernet ports.
The SanDisk Operating Environment (SOE)
The SOE unlocks the full potential of the hardware by optimizing the utilization of all the
available physical resources across a broad spectrum of workloads. It enables full utilization
and linear scalability of multi-core processors, intelligently manages caching from DRAM to
flash, delivers highly parallel read- and write-optimized flash memory access, and manages high
performance replication of cached data between Membrain servers.
The SOE consists of the Memcached client/server protocol layer, SanDisk data fabric, the flash
management subsystem, flash and network management, and administration, as shown in
Figure 1 on the following page.
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Memcached client/server protocol
100% compatible
Data Fabric
Thread & Core Management
Synchronization/Concurrency Management
DRAM Cache Management
Container Management
Replication Management
Optimize
•
Control
•
Flash Management Subsystem
SanDisk Operating Environment (SOE)
Flash & Network Management
Space Allocation
Object Replacement (Cache Mode)
Persistency Management
Highly Concurrent I/O & Messaging
Data Striping, RAID
Administration
Monitor
•
Configure
Figure 1: SanDisk Operating Environment (SOE)
Memcached Client/Server Protocol
The SOE protocol layer accepts Memcached commands and is a fully Memcapable 100%compatible implementation of the standard Memcached client/server protocol. Membrain is
therefore 100% compatible with all client applications. Using the familiar Memcached APIs,
client applications can perform both distributed caching operations and persistent NoSQL
key-value store operations.
SanDisk Data Fabric
The SanDisk data fabric layer implements the fundamental algorithms necessary to maximize
system balance, performance, power efficiency, and availability. The SanDisk data fabric functions include:
Fine-grained, highly concurrent and efficient multithreading and core management required
to parallelize hundreds of thousands of simultaneous flash and network accesses per second;
Intelligent, dynamic DRAM caching required for fast and efficient staging of both small and
large objects;
Creation and management of dynamic containers providing fine-grained control over cached
data, supporting attributes of size, persistence, store vs. cache mode, and replication;
Transparent, highly optimized data replication and failover.
Flash Management
The flash management layer provides space and persistence management across the parallel
flash devices. The flash management subsystem functions include:
Mapping object keys to flash locations, employing algorithms that minimize the amount
of mapping data that is kept in DRAM so that most of the DRAM can be used for caching
Memcached and key-value store data;
Maintaining persistent metadata, enabling the preservation of Memcached data across
system failures; and
Optimizing data placement and replacement across the parallel flash devices to balance
accesses, maximize effective space usage, and minimize flash wear.
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