Collaboration
BigData(mining)
s
Flash Software Defined Architecture to Dramatically Improve
Application Performance and Data Center Economics
Our Hero Flash:
OVERVIEW

Collaboration
BigData(mining)
s
3
5
7
9
11
Table of Contents:
OVERVIEW
Speed Matters ..........................................................................................
Hurry Up and Wait - The I/O Challenge ....................................................
Will a Hero Please Rise? ...........................................................................
Flash is Changing Business, and Here’s Why ...........................................
Getting Started with Flash ......................................................................

Collaboration
BigData(mining)
s
3Our Hero Flash: Flash Software Defined Architecture to Dramatically Improve Application Performance and Data Center Economics
Speed Matters
The immortal words of Ricky Bobby, “If you ain’t first, you’re
last” could not be more true when it comes to business-
critical application performance. The potential consequence of
failing applications can mean the difference between a healthy,
growing business and one that is struggling to keep pace with its
competitors.
Latency can mean the difference between a fantastic or horrible
Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) experience, an online order
fulfilled or lost, a disasstified and lost customer due to a poor
video stream experience, or even the timely discovery of a cure
for a life-threatening disease.
Business-critical applications all have the need
for immediate response times to ensure timely
delivery of data. Speed matters.
Any delay in delivering data or processing poses a risk to the
business but can also lead to:
The inability to gain timely insight into a business
If critical data cannot be accessed when and where it is needed,
the result is often poor decision making and sub-par results that
could have otherwise been avoided.
A sharp decrease in the ability to predict business
outcomes
Solid financial projections at the project, line-of-business
and company level depend on timely access to the best data
available. Any inability to access and perform the necessary
analytics on that data can hurt performance.
Speed Matters
Hurry Up and Wait - The
I/O Challenge
Will a Hero Please Rise?
Flash is Changing the
Industry, and Here’s Why
Getting Started with Flash
one toone PaaS
HybridPrivate
one toone

Collaboration
BigData(mining)
s
4Our Hero Flash: Flash Software Defined Architecture to Dramatically Improve Application Performance and Data Center Economics
Increasing customer dissatisfaction
Today, customers have grown accustomed to 24x7x365 service
and access to information. Anything less than this results in a
poor overall customer experience. In this environment, being
unable to deliver the information your customers want, when they
want it, can lead not only to lost sales but also to lost customers
and market share.
Unmanageable volumes, variety and velocity of
information
Big data will continue to grow even bigger. As we continue to
see innovation and adoption around the IoT (Internet of Things),
the influx of machine data from sensors will be quite massive.
With the unstoppable growth of data - and the reliance on this
data - many IT departments are running into a wall in terms of
the performance of key applications. Increased latency translates
into frustrated users and missed opportunities for the business.
For the IT manager, determining how to address these concerns
while balancing user needs with timely implementation, scalability
of solution, and ever-present budget restraints is never easy. And
in the end, the best solution may not be what you think of first.
Speed Matters
Hurry Up and Wait - The
I/O Challenge
Will a Hero Please Rise?
Flash is Changing the
Industry, and Here’s Why
Getting Started with Flash

Collaboration
BigData(mining)
s
5Our Hero Flash: Flash Software Defined Architecture to Dramatically Improve Application Performance and Data Center Economics
Hurry Up and Wait - The I/O
Challenge
In the past, the way system-wide latency issues were resolved
was to throw more compute power or memory at the system.
This resulted in minimal overall improvements and came with
significant costs.
When database performance is the issue, a common approach
has been to invest millions of dollars to tune and improve
efficiency of the SQL statements. While this investment can result
in performance improvements, the real limiting factor is poor
storage I/O, which cannot be fixed with SQL tuning.
A great way to waste time and resources is to have the really
fast CPU waiting on information from the storage system. The
impressive processing power of modern CPUs far out-pace the
speed at which hard disk drive based storage can deliver data to
them.
No one feels this gap in performance more than the I/O intensive
database servers. The result is that super fast processors and
massive amounts of bandwidth are wasted because HDDs take
several milliseconds – an eternity for modern CPUs – to access
and retrieve requested data. When servers wait on storage, users
wait on servers, creating a poor experience.
The performance of the storage, not processor
speed or insufficient memory, is the root cause of
application performance issues.
PaaS IaaS SaaS
Collaboration
Hybridate
Speed Matters
Hurry Up and Wait - The
I/O Challenge
Will a Hero Please Rise?
Flash is Changing the
Industry, and Here’s Why
Getting Started with Flash

Collaboration
BigData(mining)
s
6Our Hero Flash: Flash Software Defined Architecture to Dramatically Improve Application Performance and Data Center Economics
It’s not rocket science, it’s just basic physics
While the data moves through Flash (solid state components)
and the underlying network essentially at the speed of light,
hard drives move mechanically, relying on physical movement
around a rotating platter to access information. Although they
are generally reliable devices and have established themselves
as mainstream when it comes to data storage, when it comes to
data delivery speeds, HDDs are the weak link in the chain.
But wait, there are fixes for HDD latency, right?
There are work-arounds to HDD related latency issues, such
as adding disks to JBOD or RAID. By increasing the number
of disks, the I/O from a database can be spread across more
physical devices. Unfortunately, this approach has been shown
to have a trivial impact on decreasing the HDD bottleneck.
Another approach is to move frequently accessed files to their
own disks. But while this will deliver the best I/O performance
available from a single hard drive, the I/O capability of such
a drive is very limited. At best, a single hard drive can deliver
300 IOs per second (IOPS), which is nowhere close to the I/O
performance needed to close the gap.
A final approach in using traditional HDDs is to move from a
JBOD to a RAID implementation. This type of move will provide
additional performance, particularly when a high-volume cache
controller is used in front of the disk drives to stripe storage
across multiple disks. But to reach the high IOPS necessary
to meet user demand, the number of hard disk drives required
can easily become prohibitive due to cost, space requirements,
power and cooling and even their overall weight.
vs
PaaS IaaS SaaS
Collaboration
Big Data (mining)
ssd flash storage
brid
PaaS IaaS SaaS
Collaboration
Big Data (mining)
ssd flash storage
Speed Matters
Hurry Up and Wait - The
I/O Challenge
Will a Hero Please Rise?
Flash is Changing the
Industry, and Here’s Why
Getting Started with Flash

Collaboration
BigData(mining)
s
7Our Hero Flash: Flash Software Defined Architecture to Dramatically Improve Application Performance and Data Center Economics
Will a Hero Please Rise?
Due to the large performance gap between the speeds of modern
compute systems and the HDD based storage systems, there is
a need for a champion - a hero - to rise up and conquer. What we
need is a new, faster type of storage.
Enter our hero
Opportunities to truly innovate are quite rare. Flash technology
has created this opportunity to not only deliver massive I/O
performance but to transform the ease-of-use and to deliver
business value as well as data center economics.
Flash storage systems are solid state devices designed to
solve the problem of I/O wait time by providing substantially
faster access times and lower-latency IOPS than a HDD. In
simple terms, a SSD doesn’t have any moving mechanical parts
that handle data. Because of new technology and improved
economics, it is now possible to build storage systems based
entirely on flash.
Flash storage systems can either complement
or replace traditional hard disk arrays in many
business critical applications, including ERP
systems, transactional databases and analytical
applications such as BI.
The latest Flash storage systems minimize I/O wait time by
delivering access times that are 250 times faster than HDDs (0.2
milliseconds versus 5). And with the faster access times, Flash
storage systems can deliver 1,333 times more IOPS than a HDD
(more than 400,000 IOPS versus 300). These improvements can
result in a dramatic decrease in storage-driven latency.
Speed Matters
Hurry Up and Wait - The
I/O Challenge
Will a Hero Please Rise?
Flash is Changing the
Industry, and Here’s Why
Getting Started with Flash

Collaboration
BigData(mining)
s
8Our Hero Flash: Flash Software Defined Architecture to Dramatically Improve Application Performance and Data Center Economics
Where Flash really shines
Flash storage can deliver the biggest performance boost to
the applications that run highly transactional, I/O-intensive
workloads with random read-intensive or write-intensive I/O. In
most enterprises, these are the business-critical applications that
impact the bottom line. OLTP (Online Transaction Processing),
Data Warehousing and VDI (Virtual Desktop Infrastructure)
are a few of the key applications that come to mind. In these
workloads, Flash storage can support business-accelerating
projects by bringing new levels of real-time responsiveness.
OLTP workloads are most commonly used in e-commerce,
banking, online catalogs, store registers and ATMs. In these uses,
the response times to user requests are critical. Flash storage
can help improve the e-commerce web page responsiveness
during the peak hours providing shorter wait times. Less waiting
results in a higher customer satisfaction whereas slow responses
may mean a loss of business. Faster user access to product
features or pricing may mean more revenue through a higher
number of completed and fewer abandoned sales transactions.
Data warehousing workloads include data mining, trend
analysis, business modeling and hypothesis testing that are
vital in today’s competitive environment. To stay competitive,
enterprises need to process analytical intelligence or generate
reports just-in-time to make data-related decisions that provide
an immediate ROI. By evaluating incoming sales results,
businesses can adjust their overall strategy in real-time. For these
workloads, Flash can help deliver quicker business insights by
increasing the speed of completing batch jobs.
In VDI deployments, where a centralized server hosts a desktop
OS within a Virtual Machine, Flash reduces log-on time latencies
during boot storms and helps maintain high host IOPS and
throughput. This performance is essential to the end-user
satisfaction level. If the end-users are happy, then VDI adoption
rates rise and often lead to the overall success of the VDI
deployment projects.
Speed Matters
Hurry Up and Wait - The
I/O Challenge
Will a Hero Please Rise?
Flash is Changing the
Industry, and Here’s Why
Getting Started with Flash

Collaboration
BigData(mining)
s
9Our Hero Flash: Flash Software Defined Architecture to Dramatically Improve Application Performance and Data Center Economics
Flash is Changing Business,
and Here’s Why
Flash became practical for the enterprise due to a staggering
increase in consumer demand for the technology starting with the
first Apple iPhone in 2007. Since that time, the surge in demand
for Flash spurred innovation drove down flash prices while
increasing its storage density. Flash has hit the mainstream which
has helped change the way many businesses do business.
Naturally, we’ve seen the cost of Flash technology decrease
over time but the real benefit from Flash isn’t truly about reduced
operating costs. Flash has created completely new opportunities
for businesses to innovate across the board.
New Innovative Technologies
Flash has enabled new technologies like hyper-converged
infrastructure which simply were not possible before using
traditional enterprise disk. These new platforms are helping to
power some of the most innovative companies and important
organizations in the world.
Go-To-Market Strategies
New go-to-market strategies are helping businesses be on the
cutting edge and lead in an ultra-competitive landscape. These
strategies are being formed and modified in almost real-time,
thanks to modern business intelligence and analytics platforms,
powered by our hero, Flash.
Customer Service
We’re seeing customer service radically change as companies
are able to leverage faster analytics and metrics to decrease
the time needed to help a customer. We all know that “Time is
Money” but the real benefit to the business here is the improved
customer engagement experience. Companies that can better
connect with their customers, faster, will retain their business and
grow their revenues.
Speed Matters
Hurry Up and Wait - The
I/O Challenge
Will a Hero Please Rise?
Flash is Changing
Business, and Here’s Why
Getting Started with Flash

Collaboration
BigData(mining)
s
10Our Hero Flash: Flash Software Defined Architecture to Dramatically Improve Application Performance and Data Center Economics
Healthcare
Flash is changing the face of healthcare as we know it. This
is truly one of the more exciting and inspiring areas to be
transformed for the betterment of society through technology.
World-class research and treatment centers like City of Hope are
using Flash to not only enhance the patient experience but to
drastically improve research to treat cancer, diabetes and other
life-threatening diseases.
City of Hope built a private cloud for its agility and uses Flash to
put the patient’s data at the doctors fingertips. The doctors are
now able to access x rays, scans and images immediately to
better diagnose and provide treatment for their patients. Before
Flash, this data was very difficult to render and deliver to the
doctors in a timely manner.
Although there are now substantial cost benefits
to Flash, the real benefit is the innovation and
improved customer and patient experience
which simply was not possible before.
Speed Matters
Hurry Up and Wait - The
I/O Challenge
Will a Hero Please Rise?
Flash is Changing
Business, and Here’s Why
Getting Started with Flash

Collaboration
BigData(mining)
s
11Our Hero Flash: Flash Software Defined Architecture to Dramatically Improve Application Performance and Data Center Economics
Getting Started with Flash
To get the most from Flash within your company, it’s important
to strategically use it to best maximize its effectiveness and cost
efficiencies. Not all applications require an all-Flash solution but
many of the business-critical applications do.
The key is to know which application(s) should be moved over
to Flash and which may still be best served by a traditional HDD
or even a hybrid storage solution. Flash has always made your
applications and infrastructure faster, but now it can lower your
data center costs as well.
Our goal is to provide you with the financial, operational, and
business benefits of moving from traditional spinning disk to
flash. We start by engaging in a yourBusiness conversation,
where we take steps together to understand your business, your
goals and the challenges along with the current state of your
infrastructure and technology. We then take a deep dive into the
existing infrastructure to develop an outcome that is strategically
aligned with the goals and objectives of your business.
YourBusiness is a fundamental process that we have developed
over the course of our 20 years of Enterprise IT consulting
experience. We have hundreds of customers of all sizes that
span multiple industries that we do business with. Simply put,
we create Clients for Life.
We are ready to help you reduce cost, minimize risk, and
maximize your business success today.
Not all applications will benefit from Flash, but
the ones that do, are often the ones most critical
to your business.
your Cloud
Powered by thinkASG Powered by thinkASG
Powered by thinkASG
your Cloud
Powered by thinkASG
your Cloud
yourData
yourCloud
yourCloud yourData yourSupport yourSec
your Support
your Support
your Support
your Support
yourData
yourData
yourData
yourBusiness
#C4LClient forLife
yourCompute
yourSupport
yourSec
Powered by thinkASG
Speed Matters
Hurry Up and Wait - The
I/O Challenge
Will a Hero Please Rise?
Flash is Changing the
Industry, and Here’s Why
Getting Started with
Flash

Collaboration
BigData(mining)
s
We Create Clients for Life
thinkasg.com
15265 Alton Parkway, Ste 300
Irvine, California 92618
949.777.0400