Cloud storage: Lower cost and increase uptime

EMC is using Microsoft research into flash use as a memory tier between DRAM and disk drives to speed up Data Domain deduplication.

FlashStore is a Microsoft research project that batches up flash writes in a server's main memory and then writes them as a page or block, in effect turning random flash writes into sequential ones and avoiding block erase/write cycles that are otherwise endemic to flash.

The Microsoft researchers Sudipta Sengupta, Jin Li and intern Biplob Debnath said FlashStore minimises its DRAM footprint by using an index to access the data in the flash cache.

This is a key:value store using a hash-table index. Microsoft tells us it saves space on both the vertical and horizontal dimensions of the table by using a version of cuckoo hashing - where keys in table slots serve as eggs pushed out of the nest - to reduce the number of slots and slot sizes in the hash table.

In cuckoo hashing, as we understand it, for any key value two hash functions are used instead of one, giving the key two possible locations in the table instead of one. Any pre-resident key in that slot is booted out and it is then put in its alternative slot, booting out any already resident key until an empty slot is found.

Apparently this saves up on lookup time, with just two slot inspections needed. But the table has to be less than half full and, if it gets full, it has to be rebuilt because there isn't an empty slot for the last displaced key value hash.

Returning from computer science territory

The researchers say that the FlashStore DRAM table is frugal in its use of DRAM and provides fast access time with an average of a single flash read per lookup. This means servers using it can perform many times faster; "several tens of factors of increased data throughput" is the phrasing they use.

Sengupta says this about applications with high IOPS needs: "You could replace 10 to 20 hard drives with one flash drive using FlashStore for such applications.

"That gives you a capital-expenditure savings, power savings, and operational-expenditure savings, as well, and you also get much faster throughput: an all-win situation on the three metrics of price, power, and performance.”

Deduplication

It sounds like deduplication could use this technique. Microsoft's FlashStore paper says: "FlashStore also achieved significantly better results than a RAM/hard drive or a flash drive when tested with the task of performing data-chunk indexing for data deduplication."

Steps to Take Before Choosing a Business Continuity Partner