February 6, 2015 at 17:28OCZ ZD-XL SQL Accelerator. Enlarge your SQL
The queen gave birth on the night.
Not either a son, not a daughter;
Not a mouse, not a frog,
But an unknown animal.
Alexander Sergeyevich Pushkin, if he lived in our time and worked in the IT industry, that is how he would have announced a new version of the device with the beautiful name OCZ ZD-XL SQL Accelerator . But you and I are technical people, and we understand that if miracles of technology are created, then someone needs it. The software and hardware complex from OCZ is primarily intended to make life easier for users of Microsoft SQL servers (2014, 2012 and 2008 R2), but not only them. How this miraculous unit works will be sorted out under the cut.
In fact, OCZ Storage Soultions engineers have done a tremendous job in bringing the product to market. You need to understand that the niche in which it is aimed is potentially huge, and getting into the client is 100%.
At the hardware level, this is the OCZ Z-Drive 4500 SSD (which has long been known to users) with minor changes, and at the software level, it is a host application that can simultaneously speed up volumes or individual SQL databases located on block disk storage systems by caching all or part of the SQL database directly on the server side, moreover in the immediate vicinity of the CPU and RAM, on the PCIe bus.
Let's dive deeper. The iron part, as I already said, is similar to the PCIe SSD OCZ Z-Drive 4500 - capacitors are soldered on this drive to prevent data loss during an emergency power off. The drive uses 8 SandForce SF-2500 series controllers . The minimum resource of NAND MLC memory is 680 TB for the 800 GB model, 1300 TB for the 1600 GB model and 2500 TB for the 3200 GB model.
By the way, when purchasing such units, OCZ company in addition to warranty obligations, offers the customer a dedicated support engineer for the entire warranty period.
What is interesting for database administrators? After installing the drive and software, a special assistant will suggest dividing the drive into two parts - one under the volume and the second under the cache. This separation is possible due to two visualization processors located on the drive and controlling the distribution of NAND, the load of each NAND controller. This allows you to place on the TempDB volume, and sometimes logs, which will significantly optimize the performance of the SQL server, reduce SAN traffic and the load on disk storage. Also, during configuration, you will be given the choice of how to optimize caching policies - between OLAP (for complex analytical applications) and OLTP (for small discrete transactions).
The software allows you to set analysis parameters and intervals for each volume or database under ZD-XL acceleration, which will track activity for a given period of time, and accumulate statistics on the most “hot” data that can later be loaded into the cache by a requirement for specialized, regular operations, such as data analysis or building periodic reports. The function of pre-filling the cache based on statistics or the complete transfer of a volume or database to the cache allows you to quickly bring system performance to the maximum after a reboot or before performing specific database operations. Support for scripts allows you to fully automate these processes.
The administrator can place the whole volume or database, comparable in volume, in the cache and then the gain is very significant and there is no need to analyze the volume beforehand. The procedure is very useful after server reboots, because after that the synchronization of data in the cache and on the storage system may be violated.
The corporate market differs significantly from the consumer market in that it is very difficult to deceive a corporate client. Any statements about high performance are checked much more thoroughly than by end users.
Let's talk about performance. Probably the easiest option is to compare a RAID 6 disk array of 16 SAS disks with a speed of 10K and two options for using ZD-XL SQL - as a cache and as a flash.
The picture is as follows:
When working with a small number of users, the difference will be barely noticeable, but as soon as the border of 5000 users is passed, the gap begins to grow sharply. Server performance (transactions per second) when working with a database of 20,000 users grows up to 2.5 times when using OCZ ZD-XL SQL as a caching, and up to 9 times when working as a data warehouse.
The average latency when working with the same number of users when using the cache improves by almost 3 times and a huge number of times (the difference reaches 6 orders of magnitude) when the database is fully placed in the device’s memory
Moreover, the above are not the worst options, where the storage systems have a direct connection. In cases where consolidation is applied, SAN is actively used, the general storage system is overloaded, the SAN network is overloaded, the gain of SQL servers from the use of ZD-XL can reach up to 20 times, and other network servers also get a breath of fresh air, since Significantly reduced traffic from SQL servers.
The advantage of this solution is that you can use both scenarios at the same time, and cache and flash are a serious difference from other similar devices.
Pure performance for connoisseurs of the beautiful:
" While reading 4K blocks in 16 streams and a depth of 16 read requests, the indicators exceed 171K IOPS, and for writing - above 140K IOPS.
"Sequential read / write in 128K blocks is over 2150 and 1120 gigabytes per second, respectively.
Why am I telling all this? Yes, in fact, I boast that OCZ can - a solution for a wide segment of the market right out of the box, which does not require a radical reconfiguration or reconfiguration of the existing system, with an instant result that maximizes the company's experience in developing easy-to-use, but complex Essentially and quality products.
A truly unique combination of software and hardware is already working in real life and will only improve its performance over time. Small drives (800 gigabytes) from the ZD-XL series should be primarily used as caching, but for big brothers of 1.6 and 3.2 terabytes, of course, it is better to serve as fast storage for medium-sized databases, while simultaneously speeding up the cache more volume network resources.
ZD-XL can accelerate not only MS SQL databases, but also MS Exchange servers and almost any OLTP-like loads. Just the maximum optimization of caching policies is made for MS SQL.
Given the fact that the deployment does not require special skills and is easy to configure, ZD-XL is an excellent option to speed up existing database servers that run on classic hard drives. The ability to have both volume and cache on the same device will be especially useful for speeding up 1C servers.
You can learn more about the product on the official website . And from this link you can order white paper .
Our previous publications:
" OCZ plans to release new SSDs for 2015
" SSD SATA vs SSD PCI-E | Part one: theoretical
" OCZ. We are back
Thank you for your attention!
Not either a son, not a daughter;
Not a mouse, not a frog,
But an unknown animal.
Alexander Sergeyevich Pushkin, if he lived in our time and worked in the IT industry, that is how he would have announced a new version of the device with the beautiful name OCZ ZD-XL SQL Accelerator . But you and I are technical people, and we understand that if miracles of technology are created, then someone needs it. The software and hardware complex from OCZ is primarily intended to make life easier for users of Microsoft SQL servers (2014, 2012 and 2008 R2), but not only them. How this miraculous unit works will be sorted out under the cut.
In fact, OCZ Storage Soultions engineers have done a tremendous job in bringing the product to market. You need to understand that the niche in which it is aimed is potentially huge, and getting into the client is 100%.
At the hardware level, this is the OCZ Z-Drive 4500 SSD (which has long been known to users) with minor changes, and at the software level, it is a host application that can simultaneously speed up volumes or individual SQL databases located on block disk storage systems by caching all or part of the SQL database directly on the server side, moreover in the immediate vicinity of the CPU and RAM, on the PCIe bus.
Let's dive deeper. The iron part, as I already said, is similar to the PCIe SSD OCZ Z-Drive 4500 - capacitors are soldered on this drive to prevent data loss during an emergency power off. The drive uses 8 SandForce SF-2500 series controllers . The minimum resource of NAND MLC memory is 680 TB for the 800 GB model, 1300 TB for the 1600 GB model and 2500 TB for the 3200 GB model.
By the way, when purchasing such units, OCZ company in addition to warranty obligations, offers the customer a dedicated support engineer for the entire warranty period.
What is interesting for database administrators? After installing the drive and software, a special assistant will suggest dividing the drive into two parts - one under the volume and the second under the cache. This separation is possible due to two visualization processors located on the drive and controlling the distribution of NAND, the load of each NAND controller. This allows you to place on the TempDB volume, and sometimes logs, which will significantly optimize the performance of the SQL server, reduce SAN traffic and the load on disk storage. Also, during configuration, you will be given the choice of how to optimize caching policies - between OLAP (for complex analytical applications) and OLTP (for small discrete transactions).
The software allows you to set analysis parameters and intervals for each volume or database under ZD-XL acceleration, which will track activity for a given period of time, and accumulate statistics on the most “hot” data that can later be loaded into the cache by a requirement for specialized, regular operations, such as data analysis or building periodic reports. The function of pre-filling the cache based on statistics or the complete transfer of a volume or database to the cache allows you to quickly bring system performance to the maximum after a reboot or before performing specific database operations. Support for scripts allows you to fully automate these processes.
The administrator can place the whole volume or database, comparable in volume, in the cache and then the gain is very significant and there is no need to analyze the volume beforehand. The procedure is very useful after server reboots, because after that the synchronization of data in the cache and on the storage system may be violated.
The corporate market differs significantly from the consumer market in that it is very difficult to deceive a corporate client. Any statements about high performance are checked much more thoroughly than by end users.
Let's talk about performance. Probably the easiest option is to compare a RAID 6 disk array of 16 SAS disks with a speed of 10K and two options for using ZD-XL SQL - as a cache and as a flash.
The picture is as follows:
When working with a small number of users, the difference will be barely noticeable, but as soon as the border of 5000 users is passed, the gap begins to grow sharply. Server performance (transactions per second) when working with a database of 20,000 users grows up to 2.5 times when using OCZ ZD-XL SQL as a caching, and up to 9 times when working as a data warehouse.
The average latency when working with the same number of users when using the cache improves by almost 3 times and a huge number of times (the difference reaches 6 orders of magnitude) when the database is fully placed in the device’s memory
Moreover, the above are not the worst options, where the storage systems have a direct connection. In cases where consolidation is applied, SAN is actively used, the general storage system is overloaded, the SAN network is overloaded, the gain of SQL servers from the use of ZD-XL can reach up to 20 times, and other network servers also get a breath of fresh air, since Significantly reduced traffic from SQL servers.
The advantage of this solution is that you can use both scenarios at the same time, and cache and flash are a serious difference from other similar devices.
Pure performance for connoisseurs of the beautiful:
" While reading 4K blocks in 16 streams and a depth of 16 read requests, the indicators exceed 171K IOPS, and for writing - above 140K IOPS.
"Sequential read / write in 128K blocks is over 2150 and 1120 gigabytes per second, respectively.
Why am I telling all this? Yes, in fact, I boast that OCZ can - a solution for a wide segment of the market right out of the box, which does not require a radical reconfiguration or reconfiguration of the existing system, with an instant result that maximizes the company's experience in developing easy-to-use, but complex Essentially and quality products.
A truly unique combination of software and hardware is already working in real life and will only improve its performance over time. Small drives (800 gigabytes) from the ZD-XL series should be primarily used as caching, but for big brothers of 1.6 and 3.2 terabytes, of course, it is better to serve as fast storage for medium-sized databases, while simultaneously speeding up the cache more volume network resources.
ZD-XL can accelerate not only MS SQL databases, but also MS Exchange servers and almost any OLTP-like loads. Just the maximum optimization of caching policies is made for MS SQL.
Given the fact that the deployment does not require special skills and is easy to configure, ZD-XL is an excellent option to speed up existing database servers that run on classic hard drives. The ability to have both volume and cache on the same device will be especially useful for speeding up 1C servers.
You can learn more about the product on the official website . And from this link you can order white paper .
Our previous publications:
" OCZ plans to release new SSDs for 2015
" SSD SATA vs SSD PCI-E | Part one: theoretical
" OCZ. We are back
Thank you for your attention!