Abstract: Nowadays, all-flash storage is one of the biggest driving forces in the data center market. Compared with the international market, China embraces stronger all-flash growth. According to 2018 Q3 statistics from IDC, the market share of China’s all-flash storage increased 208.2 percent over the same period in 2017.
In the past, flash memory replaced Hard Disk Drives (HDDs) at an unexpectedly slow pace. Now, Gartner predicts that 50 percent of HDD storage in data centers will be replaced by all-flash storage by 2020.
Many facts show that Gartner’s prediction is slowly becoming a reality. All-flash storage is one of the biggest driving forces in the data center market. Compared with the international market, China embraces stronger all-flash growth. According to 2018 Q3 statistics from IDC, the market share of China’s all-flash storage increased 208.2 percent over the same period in 2017.
Huawei China Σco-Partner Conference 2019
Milestone Era for All-Flash Data Centers
At the Huawei China Σco-Partner Conference held in Fuzhou in 2019, Huawei’s all-flash storage family took the stage. Meng Guangbin, President of the Intelligent Storage & Data Management Domain, shared that with the absolute advantages of all-flash storage in performance, reliability, power consumption, and capacity, more customers have shifted toward flash memory. Consequently, Huawei will strive toward the construction of all-flash data centers.
Meng Guangbin, President of the Intelligent Storage & Data Management Domain, Huawei IT Product Line
As the main development direction, all-flash storage has become more popular in real-world applications. All-flash deployment has gradually shifted from the superb performance pyramid to many general-purpose applications. Along with its fast speed, all-flash storage also attracts users for its time-tested SSD reliability and features support.
Traditionally, the key advantage of HDD storage has been the capacity price. However, the price of flash memory has declined significantly in recent years. In the next 12 months, the performance of all-flash storage is expected to improve 10 times. In addition, the density will double, and the unit capacity price will be reduced by half. Meanwhile, new technologies such as NVMe and 3D XPoint are becoming mature. Software capabilities such as deduplication and compression are widely used, which further improves the utilization of all-flash storage. Enterprises, challenged with meeting the demands of high performance and capacity at affordable prices, will certainly be impressed by the cost-effective benefits of all-flash storage.
Undoubtedly, all-flash storage has reached a critical point in terms of reliability and Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) that concern most enterprises.
AI Readiness
Artificial Intelligence (AI), which has become a hot topic in recent years, is also much-discussed in the storage industry. Many vendors, including Huawei, have deployed AI-based storage Operations and Maintenance (O&M) systems to predict and locate faults, analyze performance and capacity trends, and provide system health status. This greatly reduces the O&M costs.
Pang Xin, Vice President of the Intelligent Storage & Data Management Domain, said that many large enterprises complained most about O&M issues in communications. Users require fast service rollout and quick troubleshooting, while facing complex parameter configurations.
Pang Xin, Vice President of the Intelligent Storage & Data Management Domain, Huawei IT Product Line
Beginning with the launch of OceanStor V5, Huawei has kept its eyes on AI storage systems. Huawei’s all-flash storage integrates eService, Huawei’s intelligent cloud management platform. Leveraging global connectivity of Huawei storage and deep learning capabilities of HUAWEI CLOUD EI, Huawei upgrades the storage management mode though AI and big data. In this way, systems can be quickly deployed based on the intelligent service model to predict performance issues and anticipate capacity bottlenecks in advance, and implement automatic optimization.
In addition, Huawei develops Smart series software to improve storage utilization and management. With the development of AI technology, Huawei will improve its flash intelligence for more intelligent acceleration of devices. It will also implement simplified O&M on multiple devices.
Huawei has accumulated more than 14 years of all-flash experience since the first generation of self-developed SSDs were introduced in 2005. Huawei is the only storage vendor with self-developed SSDs, self-developed controller chips, and self-developed flash storage operating systems.
Huawei has spent many years maximizing SSD performance, increasing SSD service life, and reducing latency and jitter during SSD garbage collection to improve write performance. Huawei’s all-flash storage Dorado V3 uses FlashLink disk-controller collaboration technology to implement in-depth optimization of SSD system data layout and I/O scheduling. FlashLink provides end-to-end stability, low latency, and high performance. Further, after enabling value-added features — such as snapshots, deduplication and compression, and active-active — the performance of OceanStor Dorado V3 remains stable and much higher than that of competitors.
However, this is only a start. AI will be further applied to storage — such as intelligent workload identification and dynamic adjustment of system parameters — to provide optimal system capabilities. In addition, the intelligent algorithm automatically optimizes the data distribution mode in the storage system, saving network consumption and balancing system workloads. And Huawei will continue to make further progress in AI applications.
Huawei All-Flash Storage, Ideal for Financial Enterprises
According to 2018 Q3 statistics from Gartner, Huawei storage ranked first in terms of revenue, shipment volume, and shipment capacity in China’s market. Huawei’s OceanStor Dorado V3 all-flash series and OceanStor F V5 series have gained strong market performance since their launches. The Gartner report indicates that Huawei’s all-flash storage reached the highest revenue growth rate in the world.
Huawei provides the industry’s first all-flash storage series that supports the NVMe architecture in midrange and high-end models. OceanStor Dorado V3 also offers the industry’s fastest midrange and high-end all-flash storage.
Storage Exhibition Area, Huawei China Σco-Partner Conference 2019
According to 2018 Q3 statistics from IDC, Huawei‘s all-flash storage has the largest market share in China. Kang Xiaoyu, Director of the China Enterprise IT Solutions Sales Dept. of Huawei EBG, said that all-flash customers in China are clustered in the finance, government, and carrier sectors. However, all-flash customers are rapidly increasing in enterprises, as well as the healthcare industry. Chinese customers are gravitating toward all-flash storage after gradually realizing its advantages in performance and TCO. Currently, the Top 12 banks and Top 4 insurance companies in China deploy Huawei’s all-flash storage.
Kang Xiaoyu, Director of the China Enterprise IT Solutions Sales Dept. of Huawei EBG
Today, Huawei all-flash storage is widely used in large banks such as Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC), Bank of China (BOC), China Construction Bank (CCB), Agricultural Bank of China (ABC), China CITIC Bank, and China Minsheng Bank. These financial enterprises selected Huawei all-flash storage to host their mission-critical databases, credit card services, and online transactions processing services. Huawei all-flash storage also carries mission-critical applications for some city-level commercial banks. Financial enterprises have demonstrated their enthusiasm, foresight, and determination in selecting Huawei‘s all-flash storage, from which their businesses are benefiting significantly. For the application pain points of financial enterprises, Huawei‘s all-flash storage is a timely hit.
Since 2015, China Life Insurance Company (CLIC) has deployed the Huawei OceanStor 18000F high-end all-flash series. Huawei’s high-end all-flash storage with 99.9999 percent availability provides CLIC with a stable and reliable platform for data storage, analysis, and management to easily cope with workload peaks. In addition, CLIC selected Huawei’s HyperMetro to provide all-in-one active-active solutions, including unified SAN and NAS. HyperMetro helps the insurance enterprise successfully deploy business-critical systems such as underwriting, claims, ERP, actuarial calculations, and office systems. With Huawei OceanStor, CLIC effectively meets the data synchronization requirements of cross-region and remote active-active data centers. The all-flash series can also meet the service production requirements of China Life Group at any time by providing efficient, secure, and reliable approaches to efficient data storage management.
From the overall layout of Huawei all-flash storage to the long-term positive feedback from industries such as finance, all-flash storage is becoming the mainstay for enterprise-class, mission-critical applications. In fact, all-flash storage is vital in terms of addressing technology maturity, stability, functionality, and cost-effectiveness. Thanks to these technology advancements, we are stepping into an exciting and challenging era where the transition from hybrid to all-flash storage is accelerating rapidly.
Source: Huawei Enterprise Blog
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