All-Flash FAS Array-NetApp

This paper discusses the benefits, advantages, and efficiency of All-Flash FAS Array-NetApp, including its high performance, storage efficiency, and availability. It also compares it to hybrid flash arrays and provides insights on the cost-effectiveness of flash storage solutions.

ALL-FLASH FAS ARRAY-NETAPP 1
All-Flash FAS Array-NetApp
Student Name
Institutional Affiliation

ALL-FLASH FAS ARRAY-NETAPP 2
Executive Summary
NetApp offers flash storage solutions and one of them is All-flash arrays that is quickly gaining
momentum in the market. It offers greater speed and high performance as compared to the
traditional hard-disk drive. It is important for the decision makers to consider this approach
because of the benefits that the enterprise will benefit. However, there are still some critics that
still think that flash technology is expensive. Technological evolution and advancement have
made it possible to implement all-flash and hybrid flash technologies at a lower cost. all-flash
arrays, when implemented as a section of a scaled-out cluster, benefits for operations that has
been enabled by DATA ONTAP that is clustered and are non-disruptive which has been proven
to offer more that 99.99% uptime in production environments, thus ensuring enterprise-class
availability. It is also easy to monitor the status of the SSD using CLI commands that are simple
and easy to remember and which provides important information concerning SSD wear. This
paper will focus on ALL-flash Array by NetApp.

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Table of Contents
Executive Summary.........................................................................................................................2
Introduction......................................................................................................................................4
All-Flash Arrays..............................................................................................................................4
Advantages of All-Flash Arrays..................................................................................................5
Hybrid flash arrays..........................................................................................................................7
Conclusion.......................................................................................................................................7
Reference List..................................................................................................................................9

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Introduction
Flash storage is gaining popularity at a high rate because of its greater speed and the ability to
utilize less capacity [1]. Flash allows organizations to enjoy advantages like consolidated apps,
reduced power consumption per machine, and increased performance. In the past years, flash
storage was being used reservedly because it was quite expensive. Due to the evolution and
advancement of technology, efficiencies and improvements have been made on flash storage
thus reducing the cost [2]. Nevertheless, there are still some instances where the use of hard disk
drives (HDD) is still more economical and efficient. This is one of the major reasons why there
is rise of storage solutions such as hybrid flash storage.
Currently, there are many vendors who provide all-flash arrays (AFAs) with high performance in
order to meet the high-throughput processes and workloads with low latency requirements and
data access with random patterns like online data processing and virtual desktop infrastructure.
AFAs provide high performance as compared to HDD-based systems for similar processes
although several of them do not have vital abilities in a single crucial area: management of
enterprise data [3]. NetApp provides all-flash FAS storage arrays that can be implemented as a
section of scaled-out architecture that is unified and that bring numerous advantages to the
leading industry data management properties of ONTAP operating system. Combining enterprise
data management and flash technology bring benefits to three main areas: storage efficiency,
availability, and performance.

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Figure 1: NetApp Flash Devices
Source: Adapted from [3]
All-Flash Arrays
Solid state disks (SSDs) stores data in all-flash arrays. Flash media is used only for non-volatile
and persistent storage- data that cannot be affected by power failures or blackouts. Speed is one
key property of all-flash because it has no moving parts making it easier and faster to carry out
I/O operations and quick read and write [4]. Because of the high performance offered by all-flash
makes it possible to run critical applications that require high-speed data input.

ALL-FLASH FAS ARRAY-NETAPP 6
Figure 2: All Flash Array increasing functionality while price is decreasing
Source: Adapted from [4]
In addition to performance, AFA is cot effective because they typically occupy less space and are
smaller to fit in the storage rack. It also consumers less power because flash runs on solid state
disks that has no moving part thus requires not or less cooling. The decision makers should look
at the overall picture that all-flash arrays have to offer even though critics have argued that it is
costly. The total cost of ownership is seen when the companies use all-flash arrays as general-
purpose storage infrastructure for applications as compared to hard disk drive-based systems.
Many C-level employees still have the notion that flash storage is an expensive storage
alternative for business because they lack more understanding of the impact that such technology
can have at business-level.
Advantages of All-Flash Arrays
NetApp FAS systems latest generation employs software enhancements and several CPU cores
to unlock higher speed in solid state drive as compared to past FAS platform. For instance,
FAS8000 family depending on the architecture and PCIe, can be scaled out up to 24 nodes to
offer many IOPS (millions) at a very high-speed latency (sub-milli second) and support SSD

ALL-FLASH FAS ARRAY-NETAPP 7
capacity of up to 5PB [5]. The new hardware features allow NetApp FAS systems to enhance the
performance of solid-state drive including:
 De-staged writes: NetApp all-flash FAS removes write limits that SSD has by using
NetApp write anywhere file layout (WAFL) that eliminates SSD writes from the vital
workload latency path. This is achieved by directly writing to the system memory which
is a faster process compared to writing to solid-state drives. To protect incoming writes,
FAS system utilizes non-volatile random-access memory (NVRAM) that is backed by a
battery. Writes are logged into the NVRAM when it is received in the memory form the
host. Once received, the NVRAM sends write acknowledgement to the host immediately
confirming that the write process was completed [6]. Writes are then de-stages to the
solid-state drives during a perioding consistent point.
Figure 3: How De-staged writes occur
Source: Adapted from [6]
 Proximal Data Patterns: to reduce the effects that random operations have on the SSD,
WAFL employs the use of proximal write patterns and a highly flexible SSD write
allocation policies as writes are de-staged to the SSD from the memory. No blocks are
assigned permanently to disked locations that are fixed by adopting these practices. The
throughput of SSD’s write is optimized by this technique and the need for extra write

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cycles are minimized which are not desired in flash technology, commonly known as
‘write amplification.’ Reducing the effects of random processes and minimizing the
number of writes increases SSD overall life span and increases performance.
 Read-ahead caching: read-ahead algorithm of a data ONTAP which is customized has the
ability to identify data that is read often (hot data). The algorithm detects detect the read
patterns even before the host makes a read request and stage to the system memory pre-
emptively the reads that are have higher chances of being accessed. This allows direct
reading of cache reads from the memory without having to access the data from SSD
directly [7]. By doing so, the number of I/O requests are reduced that should be served
directly by the SSD creating more space to support heavy SSD writes periods.
Additionally, scheduling algorithms are utilized to ensure that latency-sensitive reads are
prioritized over throughput-sensitive writes.
Figure 4: Read ahead caching
Source: Adapted from [7]
Secondly, all-flash arrays, when implemented as a section of a scaled-out cluster, benefits for
operations that has been enabled by DATA ONTAP that is clustered and are non-disruptive

ALL-FLASH FAS ARRAY-NETAPP 9
which has been proven to offer more that 99.99% uptime in production environments, thus
ensuring enterprise-class availability [8]. More benefits are reaped by moving the processes
within a cluster with the ability to expand to 24 nodes. Many processing can be executed and run
without experiencing downtime in terms of storage capabilities including software and hardware
upgrades, performance balancing, and key lifecycle processes. The cost of protecting data is also
minimized by storing copies of data from every all-flash node to hybrid nodes a cheaper price
per terabyte [9]. Moreover, workloads and processes can be moved seamlessly between the high-
performance all-flash nodes and hybrid nodes in order to optimize performance and cost while
responding to the changing requirements.
NetApp solid state drives have a high rating based on daily write operation and has been proven
and warrantied by world support organization. It is also easy to monitor the status of the SSD
using CLI commands that are simple and easy to remember and which provides important
information concerning SSD wear. The event management system on the Data ONTAP records
an auto support event and notifies to facilitated preventive measures in the event that the wear
threshold of SSD has been surpassed.
Thirdly, is storage efficiency; when considering all-flash array, one of the primary concerns is
cost. SSD based systems are continuously gaining significant premium compared to hard-disk
drive-based system despite the reducing costs. Additionally, the vendors of All-flash arrays are
starting to introduce techniques of reducing data such as compression and deduplication to lessen
the high SSDs cost. Nevertheless, access to a wider storage suite is provided by deploying an all-
flash array with Data ONTAP in order to reduce cost and increase storage efficiency. Users of
NetApp all-flash FAS can use the following technologies to store active data the exceeds storage
limit of the system: Snapshot technology, Data compression, RAID-DP, Thin provisioning,
storage-efficient replication, FlexClone technology, and deduplication [10].
NetApp provides a wide range of storage solutions that are flash-optimized including all-flash
arrays and hybrid flash that is designed to enhance the performance of the application while
ensuring that availability and reliability are maintained at high level [11].

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Hybrid flash arrays
Hybrid flash arrays is a combination of hard-disk drive and solid-state drive technologies to
enable enterprises to take advantage of the HDD predictability and SSD high-performance
levels. It makes economic sense to businesses and organizations relying on HDD storage
infrastructure to add some flash-storage solutions for specific applications. It allows the to transit
slowly to the new storage technology to achieve high level of performance while reducing the
cost that could be incurred in direct change-over.
Figure 5: Difference between Hybrid and All-Flash Arrays
Source: Adapted from [12]
Hybrid flash also has the ability to gain efficiency and adaptability [12]. Although HDD can
store large volumes of data there are some challenges that may cause it to be slow. A balanced
storage infrastructure is achieved by combining the high capacity of HDD and the high-
performance of SSD [13].
Conclusion
Both hybrid and al-flash arrays are cost effective and provide enhanced performance regardless
of the storage infrastructure that is already in place. They offer greater speed and capacity that
the past versions in addition to cloud-ready capabilities and guaranteed availability, satisfaction

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guarantees and timeless storage. Flash allows organizations to enjoy advantages like
consolidated apps, reduced power consumption per machine, and increased performance. In the
past years, flash storage was being used reservedly because it was quite expensive. NetApp
provides all-flash FAS storage arrays that can be implemented as a section of scaled-out
architecture that is unified and that bring numerous advantages to the leading industry data
management properties of ONTAP operating system. The decision makers should look at the
overall picture that all-flash arrays have to offer even though critics have argued that it is costly.

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Reference
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