Intel SSD DC S3500 Series Workload Characterization in RAID Configurations White Paper December 2013 329903-001US
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Intel SSD DC S3500 Workload Characterization in RAID Configurations Contents 1.0 Revision History ................................................................................................... 5 2.0 Supporting Documentation ................................................................................... 5 3.0 About This Guide .................................................................................................. 5 4.0 Overview .....................................................
Intel SSD DC S3500 Workload Characterization in RAID Configurations Tables Table 1 Typical Mixed Workloads in Data Center Applications ....................................... 7 Figures Figure 1 RAID 1 Random 100% Write @ 4KB Transfer Size with Average Latency ............ 11 Figure 2 RAID 1 Random 70% Read @ 4KB Transfer Size with Average Latency ............. 11 Figure 3 RAID 1 Random 90% Read @ 4KB Transfer Size with Average Latency .............
Intel SSD DC S3500 Workload Characterization in RAID Configurations 1.0 Revision History Document Number Revision Number 329903 001 2.0 Description Initial release Revision Date December 2013 Supporting Documentation For more information on Intel SSDs, see the corresponding documentation. Document Intel® Solid-State Drive DC S3500 Series Product Specification 3.0 Document No.
Intel SSD DC S3500 Workload Characterization in RAID Configurations A selection of workloads that represent both best-case performance and real-world performance are presented in this white paper. These scenarios give the IT professional a better understanding of the capabilities of the Intel® SSD DC S3500 Series drive when used in conjunction with a hardware RAID controller.
Intel SSD DC S3500 Workload Characterization in RAID Configurations 4.2 Queue Depth and Latency Latency – The amount of time needed to service one outstanding IO to the drive, measured in milliseconds (ms) or, with SSDs, microseconds (µs). The Intel® SSD DC S3500 Series supports a maximum queue depth of 32 per drive. In a RAID array, the queue depth is multiplied by the number of drives in the RAID set. Example: In a RAID 5 set of 8 drives, the maximum total queue depth would be 256 (8 X 32).
Intel SSD DC S3500 Workload Characterization in RAID Configurations mixes, read-intensive workloads are more prominent. In summary, it is important to select the proper SSD for a particular workload. The examples presented here use 100% write and 100% read workloads to show the maximum performance in these areas. Also, 70%/30% read/write and 90%/10% read/write are used in order to simulate typical workloads in the datacenter. 4.
Intel SSD DC S3500 Workload Characterization in RAID Configurations 5.0 5.1 RAID 1 Test System Specifications¹ The system used for RAID 1 testing include the following: • Intel® R2208GZ4GC-IDD 2U rack mount server • Intel® S2600GZ server board • 2x Intel® Xeon® E5-2690 8-core CPUs (2.
Intel SSD DC S3500 Workload Characterization in RAID Configurations 5.2 Intel® SSD DC S3500 Series in RAID 1 Performance Characterization Data This section provides performance characterization data for the Intel® SSD DC S3500 Series in RAID 1 configurations. To establish baseline expectations for IOPS, the Intel SSD DC S3500 Series 480GB drives were evaluated in RAID 1 sets of 2, 4, 6 & 8 drives. The data collected was based on a different mix of read and write random and sequential workloads.
Intel SSD DC S3500 Workload Characterization in RAID Configurations Figure 1. RAID 1 Random 100% Write @ 4KB Transfer Size with Average Latency Intel internal testing, October 2013 Notes: Figure 1 - The write performance of the two drive RAID 1 set matches the write performance of a single Intel® DC S3500 drive. This indicates very low latency introduced by the RAID controller. As more drives are added, the write performance scales linearly.
Intel SSD DC S3500 Workload Characterization in RAID Configurations Figure 3. RAID 1 Random 90% Read @ 4KB Transfer Size with Average Latency Intel internal testing, October 2013 Figure 4. RAID 1 Random 100% Read @ 4KB transfer size with Average Latency Intel internal testing, October 2013 Notes: Figures 2, 3 - In mixed workloads, 70% read and 90% read, IOPS increase with additional drives and show slightly exponential growth with deeper queues.
Intel SSD DC S3500 Workload Characterization in RAID Configurations 5.3 RAID 1 Consistency Consistency behind a RAID controller is very important because the performance of any RAID set is limited by the lowest performing drive. As a RAID set increases in number of drives, the probability of any given drive performing poorly increases. Therefore, if the model of drive used is inconsistent in its performance, the inconsistency increases with the size of the RAID set.
Intel SSD DC S3500 Workload Characterization in RAID Configurations 6.0 6.1 RAID 5 Test System Specifications The system used for RAID 5 testing was identical to the system used for RAID 1 testing except the following changes: • 2x Intel Xeon E5-2680 8-core CPUs (2.7 GHz) • 3x up to 8x Intel SSD DC S3500 Series 800GB drives Note: 6.2 For this test, 800GB drives were used.
Intel SSD DC S3500 Workload Characterization in RAID Configurations Figure 6. RAID 5 Random 100% Write @ 4KB Transfer Size with Average Latency Intel internal testing, October 2013 NOTES: There are gains in write performance as drives are added to the RAID 5 set. The change at queue depth 1 from three drives to six drives is approximately 58% increase in IOPS. For eight drives, the change is 97% increase in IOPS over the three drive set.
Intel SSD DC S3500 Workload Characterization in RAID Configurations Figure 8. RAID 5 Random 90% Read @ 4KB Transfer Size with Average Latency Intel internal testing, October 2013 Figure 9. RAID 5 Random 100% Read @ 4KB Transfer Size with Average Latency Intel internal testing, October 2013 Notes: Figures 7, 8, 9 - As the workloads become more read intensive, there is a steady increase in performance both as drives are added and as the queue deepens.
Intel SSD DC S3500 Workload Characterization in RAID Configurations Figure 10. RAID 5 Maximum Latency for 3-drive and 8-drive Configurations Intel internal testing, October 2013 6.4 RAID 5 Performance Conclusions The RAID 5 write performance data illustrates the additional processing power required of the RAID controller to calculate parity and stripe data across multiple drives. There is diminished performance gain be adding drives when compared to RAID 1.
Intel SSD DC S3500 Workload Characterization in RAID Configurations 7.0 Summary The Intel® SSD DC S3500 Series drive has proven itself in many applications where speed and reliability are essential. The data in this paper shows that this drive is very robust behind a RAID controller. In RAID 1 configurations, write performance is as expected for this setup; that is, a two drive set matches the single drive specification, and increases linearly as drives are added to the set.
Intel SSD DC S3500 Workload Characterization in RAID Configurations 8.0 8.1 Appendix RAID Levels RAID (Redundant Array of Independent Disks), developed in 1988 to improve performance, reliability and scalability of hard disk storage systems has become a standard in datacenters because of these qualities. There are many types, or levels, of RAID. RAID 0 uses block level striping to span one or more drives. This does improve performance, and increases capacity when more than one drive is used.
