FMS: Toshiba Memory America Optimizes RocksDB for SSDs

In a move designed to further its support of the Open Source Software (OSS) community, Toshiba Memory America, Inc. (TMA), U.S.-based subsidiary of Toshiba Memory Corporation, announced write amplification ⁽¹⁾ (WA) and endurance software innovations that improve RocksDB for SSDs.

Flexible and designed for use with any off-the-shelf SSD, TRocksDB is an enhancement to the RocksDB database design that uses key values more efficiently with SSDs to enable improvements in storage and DRAM usage. It also reduces the repeated data rewriting caused by application-generated WA.

The TRocksDB solution will be demonstrated publicly for the first time at Flash Memory Summit.

Taking a log-structured merge-tree (LSM tree) approach to storing data, the RocksDB platform rewrites data at least one time for every level of the database, and in many cases, multiple times per level. As a result, the total WA for RocksDB will often be greater than 21X, which leads to application-level performance delays and early SSD wear-out.

TRocksDB addresses this WA challenge with architectural advancements that enable values and keys to be stored in separately managed files. The ability to separate keys from values produces faster, more efficient database lookups, minimizes WA, and optimizes SSD utilization.

“As a leader in enterprise software, support, consulting, managed services, and training for a number of leading open source database platforms, we are excited about the advancements and optimizations associated with SSDs through open-source development,” said Peter Zaitsev, CEO, Percona LLC. “TRocksDB solves important customer application problems encountered in real-world key value database implementations that will improve SSD use and enable a wider variety of capabilities, extending the overall life of flash-based database storage.“

The server software included in the TRocksDB platform will soon be available under the terms of Apache ⁽²⁾ open-sourced licensing. It runs on any Linux hardware supported by RocksDB. Being a member of the OSS community enables TRocksDB to be part of storage innovation and industry participation that can evolve the platform to new frontiers.

“We are taking an important new step in expanding our role as a cloud storage technology leader by contributing to the OSS community and evolving SSD capabilities in database applications,” said Eric Ries, SVP, memory storage strategy division (MSSD), Toshiba Memory America. “With TRocksDB, we are providing a blueprint to improve OSS for SSDs. To streamline deployment and deliver ease of use, TRocksDB is merged from the latest released version of RocksDB and is available for download from a GitHub ⁽³⁾ repository.“

⁽¹⁾ SSD Write Amplification (WA) is a scenario that happens to SSD where data and metadata are written multiple times that increases the number of program and erase cycles. This effect can reduce the life of the SSD over time.
⁽²⁾ The Apache License is a permissive free software license written by the Apache Software Foundation. The Apache License, Version 2.0 requires preservation of the copyright notice and disclaimer.
⁽³⁾ The GitHub branch platform includes a website and cloud-based service that stores and manages the code that a company develops, and tracks and controls any changes to their code. GitHub is a trademark registered in the United States by GitHub, Inc.