Revision 5 posted to TechCenter Chats - Wiki by DELL-Sheetal G on 3/7/2013 6:17:23 AM
TechChat: Fluid Cache for DAS
| Dennis Smith | Hey Everyone! |
| Dennis Smith | Thanks for joining us today for a discussion on Fluid Cache |
| Dennis Smith | we'll give it a few minutes for everyone else to join |
| Kong Yang 2 | Hello everyone! |
| Sarah Vela | Hey Kong! |
| Dell-Peter T | Hello Kong 1 and Kong 2 |
| hypervfan | Hi Kong |
| Dell-Peter T | Hi Tom |
| TomH | Hello |
| hypervfan | Hi Peter |
| Kong Yang 2 | I cloned myself |
| Dennis Smith | Whoa....that's a lot of Kongs |
| Tom | Hello all |
| Dennis Smith | Hi Tom |
| Kong Yang 2 | Hello Sarah :-) |
| MichaelD | Greetings |
| Kong Yang 2 | Hey PT! |
| Dell-Peter T | Hi Michael Davis |
| Sarah Vela | Nice crowd today :) |
| virtualTodd | Howdy! |
| Dell-Peter T | the crowd is crowded today! |
| Miguel Pulido | Hi! |
| erson | hi all |
| erson | sure is great turnout today |
| Dennis Smith | Hi Ersone |
| Dennis Smith | Erson |
| Dennis Smith | sorry :) |
| hypervfan | Hi erson |
| Lance Boley | Welcome everyone |
| Dennis Smith | Before we get started, want to make sure you know there is still time to apply to be a Dell TechCenter RockStar! |
| Dennis Smith | http://en.community.dell.com/techcenter/b/techcenter/archive/2013/02/18/it-pro-star-search-apply-now-to-be-a-2013-dell-techcenter-rockstar.aspx |
| Lance Boley | Today's topic is Fluid Cache DAS |
| Khaled Omar | Hi all |
| Dell-Peter T | yes, apply to be a Rockstar before March 8th :) |
| Lance Boley | We have some experts online to talk with and answer your questions. |
| Dennis Smith | Hi Khaled |
| JBarnhart-Dell | Fluid Cache for DAS 1.0 to be more exact |
| Khaled Omar | i hope to have a good information about Fluid Cache DAS |
| Khaled Omar | hi Dennis |
| Lance Boley | I am going to turn things over to Kishore |
| Lance Boley | Thanks for the correct JBarnhart ... |
| Kishore Gagrani | Thanks you , Lance |
| JBarnhart-Dell | :) |
| Kishore Gagrani | Hi Everyone, my name is Kishore Gagrani, Product Manager for Fluid Cache |
| Kishore Gagrani | we are excited to announce that today we are launching Fluid Cache for DAS |
| Kishore Gagrani | Fluid Cache is a server-based application acceleration technology that combines Dell's Fluid Cache software with ultra-high speed Express Flash PCIe solid state drives and creates a cache pool within the server. Fluid Cache for DAS software enables caching of active working datasets, which accelerates response times for data intensive performance workloads. In addition, Fluid Cache for DAS maintains replicas in cache, so there's no tradeoff on data integrity for the sake of performance acceleration. |
| Kishore Gagrani | are there any questions to start? |
| Kishore Gagrani | I know wrote a long sentatnace to intro |
| Tom | Which product lines use this? |
| Kishore Gagrani | greate question |
| Khaled Omar | MD 1000 is an example for the DAS ? |
| Kishore Gagrani | Since Fluid Cache for DAS 1.0 leverages the Express Flash PCIe SSD infrastructure to create the high-performance cache, this initial 1.0 launch will be offered only on those PowerEdge servers that can support Express Flash PCIe SSDs and external PowerVault storage, the PowerEdge R620, R720 & R820, as well as the PowerEdge T620. |
| MichaelD | I read that currently only Linux is supported, any time line available for Windows or VMware support? |
| Kishore Gagrani | and the the version 1.0 is supported only on Linux servers |
| JBarnhart-Dell | Fluid Cache for DAS is not currently not supported on Dell Blades |
| Derek Dolan | Given the limitations in the 1.0 release, can you give some examples of applications that could benefit from Fluid Cache? |
| Kishore Gagrani | Windows and VMware support is on the roadmap , we will annouce the plan soon on those |
| Lance Boley | We also have Gordon, Bryan JBarnhart online to help with questions, so ask away ... |
| Gordon Bookless | Any I/O heavy application could benefit from Fluid Cache, Oracle would be a great example. |
| Ron Stefani | Are there plans for this to be supported with non-DAS storage in the future? |
| erson | What is the minimum amount of Express Flash PCIe SSD units needed for a pool? |
| Tom | How does it work? |
| JBarnhart-Dell | <---- Technical Marketing for Dell Servers |
| David White | What other fast media can take advantage of FluidCache? (e.g. std server memory, other types of Flash / DRAM devices, etc) |
| moffaa | i have heard you need some kind of dedicated network to link this all together with multiple nodes |
| Gordon Bookless | The software presents itself as a storage filter driver to the Operating System. |
| Bryan Martin | Hi, I'm the Product Planner, we will be releasing 2.0 for Compellent Storage to PE Servers in Q4 of this year |
| Ron Stefani | Thanks, Bryan! |
| JBarnhart-Dell | 1 Express Flash drive for read cache and minimum of 2 Express Flash drives for read/write back cache up to a total of 4 to increase the size of the cache pool up to 1.4TB. |
| Tom | Will this be used in other prodiucts, like the DR4000/DR4100? |
| Gordon Bookless | moffaa:We are talking here about the DAS release, which has no network requirements. Later on this year we will be releasing the SAN version which will require a cache network. |
| moffaa | thanks i guess i am on step ahead!! |
| erson | moffaa: If I recall correctly it's 10GbE |
| Bryan Martin | David, in the future we will support other cache mediums. We led off with PCIe SSD due to the huge disparity in performance to SAS/SATA currently. Longer term, we have lots of plans. The company we acquired was originally a memory virtualization company. More to come. |
| MichaelD | I presume from the phrasing of the earlier statement on blade support, that it is being looked into for a future release? |
| Khaled Omar | Kishore, you mentioned the models of servers that can support Express Flash PCIe SSDs, what about the DAS model, all are supported ? |
| Tom | which compnay did this come from> |
| Bryan Martin | MichaelD:We absolutely have plans to support Blades in our 2.0 end-to-end release with Compellent SAN |
| erson | Tom: RNA Networks |
| Kishore Gagrani | Omar> All Dell PowerEdge 12G Servers which supports Dell's Express Flash Drive and have a support for DAS |
| David White | Do you have any performance tests to show the actual difference it makes? |
| Tom | thx |
| Khaled Omar | ok |
| JBarnhart-Dell | @ Tom. the Ocarina/DR units referenced which Dell recently released are not going to incorporate the Fluid Cache for DAS SW |
| Tom | thx |
| JBarnhart-Dell | @Tom, np |
| John_L | Khaled Omar, MD1200 and MD1220 are the only enclosures that are supported as the can connect to the PERC H810. MD1000 and MD1120 are not supported |
| Khaled Omar | exactly John |
| Khaled Omar | this is what i'm asking about |
| Kishore Gagrani | David White>> Yes, we have done several testings, e.g. Fluid Cache outperforms baseline configuration in HPC NSS environment by 15X |
| erson | Is the Fluid Cache license per server or per Express Flash module? Is there a upgrade fee to get 2.0 when that is released? |
| Kishore Gagrani | David White >> there are other testing results in OLTP environment showing as much as 95% improvement in Active Response Time e.g. |
| Kishore Gagrani | Erson>> Fluid Cache for DAS is per server perpetual license (very simple and diffrentiated licensing) |
| David White | Thx. And is server licence trasferrable between servers (eg migration of a workload / end of life of an old server)? |
| erson | Do note that you can't upgrade an "ordinary" R620/R720/T620 to use Express Flash, you must choose that at the time of purchase |
| Kishore Gagrani | Erson >>> there is a active maintenance agreeeemnt at about 20% of initial license per year , which gives you Pro-support and software maintenance |
| Bryan Martin | erson> The 2.0 release is a totally separate code path: it is FLuid Cache for SAN. The DAS version is not upgradable |
| Gordon Bookless | In addition to standard Linux applications and databases we have some customers that are looking at accelerating Hadoop like applications. |
| JBarnhart-Dell | @ David the WP referencing OLTP workloads provides up to 60% more TPS, 95% imporvment in ART and 34% improve,ent in user load see blog- http://en.community.dell.com/dell-blogs/direct2dell/b/direct2dell/archive/2013/03/05/fluid-cache-for-das-1-0-enabling-our-customers-potential.aspx |
| erson | Regarding performance advantages I'll bet David J. Morse and his team will put out some benchmarks for this solution? |
| Bryan Martin | erson> following up:the DAS offering is upgradable to future DAS releases via support and Maintenance contract |
| Tom | What types of applications benefit the most? DB, virtual, oracle more then SQl? |
| Khaled Omar | can we we have a list of benefits added by the Fluid cache ? |
| Gordon Bookless | @Tom - fluid cache accelerates writes, read-after-writes and re-reads, so any application that fits that I/O profile should benefit from it. |
| Kishore Gagrani | The key benefits of Dell Fluid Cache for DAS are;Enhanced application performanceGreater scalabilityEasy manageability |
| JBarnhart-Dell | @erson we are igoing to have two post RTS WP RE:OLTP and and one for HPC NFS which will address performance in the Ref Arch. - expect those within the next 5 days... in addition there will be follow on reviews and white papers as we deep dive into direct competitive testing |
| Khaled Omar | great Kishore |
| Gordon Bookless | @Khaled - in addition to the I/O acceleration customers will also benefit from the offload of I/O from their storage. |
| Kishore Gagrani | The cache pool is the only solution which supports read and write caching, accelerate writes, read-after-writes and re-reads while providing high availability, most solutions only impact random reads. |
| Tom | I see. Since there is a filter driver, are only specific OS's supported and what heppens if there are patches/upgrades to the OS, like Micrisft weekly updates? |
| Tom | microsoft ;) |
| erson | I'm assuming that the DTC crew will create a section of delltechcenter for Fluid Cache-content? |
| Miguel Pulido | Is there an eval available for customers to try out in their specific usage environments? |
| Lance Boley | @erson - Yes we will ... |
| David White | Typically what work is needed to enable a DB or App to take advantage of the FluidCache, or is it plug in & use ? |
| Gordon Bookless | @Tom - only specific O/S's are supported but assuming the kernels are binary compatible then there shouldn't be any issues. |
| Bryan Martin | Miguel>>> Yes, we have a 90 day eval free software eval. You will need the hardware |
| Miguel Pulido | thanks! |
| Gordon Bookless | @David - fluid cache will be transparent to the application, you will need to remount your file system but no changes to the app are needed. |
| Khaled Omar | is there amounts for caching ? |
| Bryan Martin | Miguel>> if you have the hardware, should take less than 10 minutes to be up and running |
| erson | The Fluid Cache feature only talks to those Express Flash modules at the moment, which are made by Micron Technology and which come in 175GB and 350GB capacities in their 2.5-inch form factor. The 175GB unit costs $2,843 and the 350GB unit costs $5,147 |
| David White | Cool! |
| erson | I sure hope those are list prices :) |
| Tom | I would be worried about patches/updates. So, would I have to pay attention to which patches/updates I install or just do like I do now and give all important updates |
| Khaled Omar | good |
| Bryan Martin | Khaled>> The cache size is dependent on the PCIe SSD's themselves. We will support up to 4 per 2U. Current SLC capacity limited to 350GB each but releasing MLC with 700GB in Q2 and up to 1.6TB per drive in Q4 |
| Tom | give=install |
| JBarnhart-Dell | @miguel if you have a 12G rack server server which has at least 1 or 2 Express Flash drives (R620, R720, R820) and the Linus OS yoiu have the basics of what you need to take advantage of Fluid Cache for DAS, the MD 1200 or 1220 storage is optional |
| Gordon Bookless | @Tom - patches should not be an issue - for example we currently support RHELv 6.3 and have upgraded to various z-kernels without any issues. The only issue would be if the patch broke binary compatibility. |
| JBarnhart-Dell | err Linux |
| erson | So version 2.0 is Compellent-support. Is Equallogic-support further down the roadmap? |
| Kishore Gagrani | << Erson - Yea, Equallogic is on the roadmap |
| Tom | OK |
| Khaled Omar | everything still can be managed from Dell OpenManage software or there is another separete software added ? |
| Kishore Gagrani | Omar>>> Absolutely |
| Kishore Gagrani | OMSS or CLI |
| Khaled Omar | supported by all MS. windows ? |
| Kishore Gagrani | Omar >> The first version of Fluid Cache for DAS is only supported on Linuxx |
| Kishore Gagrani | Linux |
| Bryan Martin | Khaled>> we will support MS Windows on a later release but we will focus on 2012 forward |
| Tom | RHEL, CentOS, Ubuntu, and ??? |
| Khaled Omar | good |
| Kishore Gagrani | RHEL (6.2, 6.3) and SLES 11 SP2 |
| erson | Is Fluid Cache the first stepping stone to something that will span multiple servers or is it only seen as a per server technology in the long run as well? |
| Khaled Omar | there is a driver to be installed, right ? |
| Tom | Dare I mention proliant...do they have something like this? |
| erson | Good to hear about Windows 2012 support |
| JBarnhart-Dell | @ Tom - no they have nothing, they wished they did :) |
| erson | Tom: nope |
| Tom | ;) |
| Bryan Martin | erson>> Fludi Cache DAS is the introductory offering. The SAN offering will incorporate pooled cache across multiple server nodes in a read/write-back |
| Gordon Bookless | @Khaled - yes, there is an rpm that will get installed which installs the driver. |
| erson | Bryan Martin: awesome! |
| Tom | does it help with server startup, much faster or no diff? |
| Khaled Omar | so is this can make the DAS cascaded enclosures be increased to support more storage disks? |
| Gordon Bookless | @Tom - it won't affect server startup, you cannot have your boot drive on a fluid cache volume. One thing fluid cache does though, is it maintains a warm cache on a reboot so you don't have to refill the cache. |
| erson | Fluid Cache 2.0 looks very similiar to EMC VFCache |
| Gordon Bookless | @Khaled - it won't increase the actual number of disks supported off the Perc but you put the cache in front of all of the disks. |
| Khaled Omar | i see |
| Bryan Martin | erson>> VfCache is similar in many ways. They currently do not support write-back cache |
| Dennis Smith | Be sure to give us feedback here:) --------------------------------------------------------------------------> |
| Dennis Smith | Since my arrow didn't point all the way...that was for the pole on the right |
| Dennis Smith | poll |
| Sarah Vela | or the poll ;) |
| Dennis Smith | :) |
| @kylemurley | Curious to know if/how 'right sized' cache can be determined, also how does performance monitoriing communicate the benefit Fluid Cache is providing. Is there a GUI, any type of reporting in this release? |
| Tom | Is it like NVRAM? |
| erson | Try and perhaps buy-scenario would be better... ;) |
| Bryan Martin | Tom>> It is not NVRAM like in the sense that NVRAM uses a very small amount of DRAM backed by NAND using a super cap or battery to accelerate. |
| Khaled Omar | so is there a battery attached ? |
| David White | Good point Kylemurley - some driver-based tools wipe out the usual OS counters for performance throughputs.. What performance information can be extracted from FluidCache, or is it accessible from the usual OS info? |
| Bryan Martin | Tom>> where Fluid Cache uses PCIe Flash drives that can range up to 3TB each |
| Gordon Bookless | @kylemurley - the cache should be sized based on the working data set. there are a number of ways to determine that such as Dell's dpac solution. OMSS can be used to manage the cache and it also include cache usage statistics and perfomance. |
| Gordon Bookless | @David - there are also command line tools that can display the cache utilization and performance |
| David White | Good, thanks. |
| @kylemurley | @Gordon. Thx |
| erson | Is Dennis Smith the pole dancer... err I mean the poll master? |
| @kylemurley | Are users saying that write-back cache is a critical/desired feature? Do the benefits of writeback outweigh the complexity of orchestrating a nother 'tier ' of data to be protected? |
| Sarah Vela | erson took my joke |
| Sarah Vela | which, thank you erson. because it would be inappropriate of me. ;) |
| erson | Sarah Vela, sorry for that, I give you the next one |
| @kylemurley | @DSmith only dances under bridges... ;-) |
| Dell-Peter T | lol |
| Tom | Is there a significant difference in heat output/power usage? |
| Dell-Peter T | need more work on the polls |
| Bryan Martin | @kylemurley>> wite back shows significant performance in all applications that actually work on the data. an OLAP worload would not benefit but OLTP worklod shows tremendous benefits. The data orhestration is simply what's required and the IP from RNA |
| Tom | Like if I had a rack of servers full of these cards...would I have to be concerned w/ac? |
| erson | So 2.0 at Q4 and then 3.0 around 13G with Haswell-EP. Looks good to me... :) |
| erson | Tom: they are SSDs so heat output is minimal |
| Tom | thx |
| Gordon Bookless | @Tom - the flash drives don't add any significant load in terms of power or heat |
| erson | Dell being all open and so I kinda wish they would support other types of PCIe SSDs than their own Express Flash. Perhaps that is in the cards? |
| Bryan Martin | erson:We will be supporting NVMe devices as standard in a later release |
| JBarnhart-Dell | Dell Tech Center Blog - http://en.community.dell.com/techcenter/extras/b/news/archive/2013/03/04/techchat-fluid-cache-for-das.aspx |
| @kylemurley | @Bryan Thank you. Regarding overhead consumed in protecting the data, say I have 2 Dell R820s each w/350GB Microns in them, assuming a 'fully warmed cache' what percentage of that space is useable on each? |
| erson | Bryan:Good, much respect for keeping it open |
| Dennis Smith | Be sure to vote in the new polls on the right |
| Dell-Peter T | more technical blog is located here: http://en.community.dell.com/techcenter/b/techcenter/archive/2013/03/05/improving-oltp-database-performance-using-dell-fluid-cache-for-das.aspx |
| Gordon Bookless | @Kylemurley - 100% of the SSD space is always available for the cache but I assume you are asking about the ovrehead for the write cache? Fluid cache replicates "dirty" blocks to another SSD, and keeps the copy until the data is pesisted to the backend st |
| Lance Boley | We have just a couple more minutes for any last questions ... |
| JBarnhart-Dell | @Tom- you asked about power consumption - there will be a post RTS test and 3rd party review which will provide information regarding power consumption during synthetic workload testing... expect that in the next 90 days |
| @kylemurley | @ Thx SuperTsai |
| @kylemurley | @Gordon . Thank you. Yes, so only overhead is until the de-staging occurs. |
| Gordon Bookless | Correct |
| Lance Boley | Thanks everyone we had some great questions, talk to everyone next time. |
| Sarah Vela | thanks to all of you for participating! |
| Tom | Thanks, this is great!!! |
| Kishore Gagrani | thank you |
| @kylemurley | Great. Exciting advances coming. looking forward to VMware and coordination between Fluid Cache & Dell array controller caches / tiers for autotiering/progression |
| Miguel Pulido | Thank you!!! |
| Kishore Gagrani | Look forward to your taking Fluid Cache on ride |
| erson | Thanks to Kishore, Bryan Martin, JBarnhart, Gordon Bookless and David White! And everyone I forgot to mention... |