ESG Lab Report Validates Virident FlashMAX PCI Flash Adapter

Virident Systems, Inc. announced the results of an ESG Lab report validating the sustained performance and scalability of the FlashMAX SCM solution.

                       Predictable, Scalable Performance

The results of ESG’s testing demonstrated that Virident’s FlashMAX PCIe SCM solution delivers predictably fast, real-world application performance over the life of the device. In addition, testing concluded the product is well suited for the growing number of performance-sensitive OLTP, OLAP, DSS, HPC and VDI enterprise workloads that are migrating from traditional disk drives to high-speed flash memory.

Additional testing results include:

• Sustained performance of 96,825 IOPS over two hours for an 8 KB OLTP workload and drive filled to capacity.
• Predictable performance scalability with a variety of IO block sizes that peaked at 1.39 GB/sec from a single FlashMAX drive (4 KB sequential reads).
• Extremely fast sub-millisecond response times (38 and 64 microseconds for 4 KB random write and read workloads, respectively).
• Near-linear performance scalability; up to eight FlashMAX cards delivered up to 2.2 million IOPS and 10.6 GB/sec of throughput on a single server.

"First-generation flash-based storage solutions often have challenges maintaining predictably high levels of performance, over time, for real-world applications with mixed-IO patterns. Sustainable performance over the life of an adapter is a particularly vexing challenge due to the impact of background garbage-collection processes," said Brian Garrett, vice president at ESG Lab. "We confirmed that Virident FlashMAX is a next-generation PCI flash adapter that leverages intelligent algorithms to provide high levels of sustained, multi-dimensional performance, which we haven’t seen before. Extremely low latencies and high levels of performance were recorded with a variety of workloads, which impressed us the most."

ESG Lab performed hands-on evaluation and testing of the FlashMAX solution. Testing was designed to demonstrate the solution’s multi-dimensional performance capabilities using the industry-standard FIO utility.

Excerpts from the report include:
"ESG has confirmed that FlashMAX delivers predictable performance over time. Performance varied less than five percent (0.96% standard deviation) as a simulated OLTP database workload exercised all of the capacity within a single FlashMAX drive."
"ESG Lab verified that FlashMAX SCM delivers high levels of high aggregate throughput predictably and consistently for a mix of IO block sizes. Aggregate throughput performance for a single FlashMAX drive scaled in a near linear fashion to an extremely high level of 1.394 GB/sec as block sizes scaled up to 4 KB and remained steady at more than 1.25 GB/sec for larger block sizes."
"ESG Lab confirmed that FlashMAX delivers similar levels of performance for random and sequential read workloads. With excellent response times of less than 70 microseconds, significantly faster than a drive form factor SSD, FlashMAX performance varied no more than 5 percent between random and sequential 8 KB reads as up to 256 IOs were queued."
"Scalability testing with up to eight FlashMAX drives delivered extremely high levels of near-linear performance that peaked at more than 10 GB/sec of throughput and two million IOPS with a single server."
"ESG Lab has confirmed that FlashMAX is designed to comfortably meet the demanding performance requirements of these business-critical applications. ESG Lab confirmed that even when used to full capacity, FlashMAX delivers high levels of mixed read/write performance scalability for VDI and OLTP workloads (up to 800 MB/sec) and extremely high levels for a read-only DSS workload (up to 1.3 GB/sec)."

"ESG Lab is one of the most trusted names in the storage market, and we’re pleased their testing confirmed the same results that our customers are seeing," said Shridar Subramanian, vice president, product marketing, at Virident. "Enterprises today are experiencing application performance degradation combined with increasing storage requirements. FlashMAX addresses both challenges with consistent, sustained performance; scalability; and a small form factor. We think that’s a game changer."