NimbleOS - Flash for the Modern Storage System

[bmacdonald16]

Is your all-flash array “optimized for flash?” “Flash friendly?” “Purpose-built for flash?” Maybe it was “architected for flash?” These taglines sound impressive, but they do not explain what is so distinct about flash to justify a drastically different approach for storage system design.

In general, for flash arrays to be considered flash optimized, they must strive to achieve the following goals:

• Drastically prolong the lifespan of solid-state drives (SSDs), especially when multilevel cell (MLC), triple-level cell (TLC), or newer technologies are involved
• Provide consistent high performance per SSD without latency spikes
• Enable data reduction during operation, without latency spikes, to assist with cost effectiveness
• Offer extreme data integrity; the proliferation of metadata caused by the use of deduplication necessitates enormous levels of data protection

The HPE Nimble Storage unified family of flash arrays addresses these key flash design goals to provide a compelling tailored solution for flash. All HPE Nimble Storage arrays run the NimbleOS software, which uses the Cache Accelerated Sequential Layout (CASL) architecture. NimbleOS was designed from day one with optimization of flash storage in mind.

This white paper reviews crucial flash technology concepts and describes how HPE Nimble Storage arrays use the NimbleOS flash-optimized architecture to process writes and reads and to mitigate natural SSD limitations.

NimbleOS - Flash for the Modern Storage System