SanDisk FlashSoft Programming manual

Lab Validation
Report
SanDisk FlashSoft
Active Data Management
By Vinny Choinski, Senior ESG Lab Analyst, and Kerry Dolan, ESG Research Analyst
August 2012
© 2012 by The Enterprise Strategy Group, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Lab Validation: SanDisk FlashSoft 2
© 2012 by The Enterprise Strategy Group, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Contents
Introduction..................................................................................................................................................3
Background............................................................................................................................................................... 3
ESG Lab Validation ........................................................................................................................................5
Getting Started ......................................................................................................................................................... 5
Manageability........................................................................................................................................................... 7
Application Performance........................................................................................................................................ 11
Density Scale........................................................................................................................................................... 13
ESG Lab Validation Highlights.....................................................................................................................15
Issues to Consider.......................................................................................................................................15
The Bigger Truth .........................................................................................................................................16
Appendix.....................................................................................................................................................17
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ESG Lab Reports
The goal of ESG Lab reports is to educate IT professionals about data center technology products for
companies of all types and sizes. ESG Lab reports are not meant to replace the evaluation process that should
be conducted before making purchasing decisions, but rather to provide insight into these emerging
technologies. Our objective is to go over some of the more valuable feature/functions of products, show how
they can be used to solve real customer problems, and identify any areas needing improvement. ESG Lab’s
expert third-party perspective is based on its own hands-on testing as well as on interviews with customers
who use these products in production environments. This ESG Lab report was sponsored by SanDisk.

Lab Validation: SanDisk FlashSoft 3
© 2012 by The Enterprise Strategy Group, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Introduction
This report documents the results of ESG Lab testing of SanDisk FlashSoft for VMware vSphere software. Testing
focused on application performance, virtual machine (VM) density scalability, and ease of integration into a
VMware environment.
Background
Organizations are increasingly deploying solid-state drives (SSD) in their data centers. Recent ESG research
uncovered what benefits SSD users are experiencing as well as what benefits potential users hope to achieve. As
Figure 1 shows, improving application performance is at the top of both lists, followed by reducing power
consumption, improving resource utilization, and reducing operational expenses.1
Figure 1. Benefits of Solid-state Storage, Actual (Current Users) vs. Expected (Potential Adopters)
Source: Enterprise Strategy Group, 2011
SSDs can deliver orders-of-magnitude improvements in I/O over traditional hard disk drives (HDDs), offering
organizations the opportunity to reduce storage bottlenecks, speed application performance, and minimize latency.
While these features are beneficial in physical server environments, they become crucial in virtualized
environments in which workloads are aggregated and I/O becomes increasingly randomized.The challenge for
many organizations is to know how to apply SSD for maximum benefit. Identifying what applications and data will
be “hot” at what time and for how long is difficult at best, and as a result, manually assigning SSD to specific
applications or VMs is a hit-or-miss proposition.
1Source: ESG Research Report, Solid-state Storage Market Trends, November 2011.
32%
31%
23%
35%
34%
45%
69%
22%
30%
32%
36%
36%
42%
52%
0% 20% 40% 60% 80%
Reduced/deferred hardware
capital expenditures
Improved total cost of ownership
(TCO)
Improved SLAs
Reduced operational expenses
Improved resource utilization
Reduced power consumption
Improved application performance
Which of the following benefits has your organization realized – or does it
expect to realize – as the result of deploying solid-state storage technology?
(Percent of respondents, multiple responses accepted)
Current solid-
state storage
users (N=91)
Potential
solid-state
storage
adopters
(N=132)

Lab Validation: SanDisk FlashSoft 4
© 2012 by The Enterprise Strategy Group, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
SanDisk FlashSoft for VMware vSphere
FlashSoft for VMware vSphere is a software module designed to accelerate application performance in VMware
guest machines on a physical server. FlashSoft increases the performance of I/O operations in VMware
environments by creating a software-based read cache using virtualized SSD capacity; SSD is dynamically allocated
to accelerate virtual disks (VMDKs) as needed. This increase in I/O performance also enables greater virtual
machine density. No agents are used in the guest OS, and the software requires less than 10MB of disk space to
install and less than 140MB of system memory at runtime. Because FlashSoft is software-based, the cache can
consist of any SSD memory device connected via PCIe, SAS, or SATA interfaces, and SSDs can reside in the server or
outside of it. FlashSoft can accelerate data in DAS, SAN, or NAS-based data stores without restriction.
FlashSoft is installed quickly using the standard vSphere Installation Bundle (VIB), and it runs as a block-level file
device switch (FDS) loadable module in the ESX kernel (see Figure 2). This software module requires no changes to
the storage configuration, and it operates in the ESX cluster without restrictions. FlashSoft for VMware vSphere is
managed through a vCenter console plug-in and supports all native VMware functionality including high availability,
vMotion, Storage vMotion, snapshots, clones, linked clones, and VDI. It can be installed in some or all servers in a
cluster, and it can accelerate the VMDKs of any servers in which it is installed. Acceleration can selectively be
started and stopped on any VMDK individually.
Figure 2. SanDisk FlashSoft Software
FlashSoft accelerates VMDKs on VMFS or NFS storage. When FlashSoft is installed on servers running multiple
virtual machines, the cache space on the SSD is shared dynamically among the VMs. During read activity, all data
passes through the FlashSoft driver in the storage stack; FlashSoft identifies the most frequently used data and
caches it on SSD. In many cases, while only a small percentage of a total data set is “hot,” it can account for 70% to
80% of server I/O. As a result, implementing a relatively small SSD-based cache for frequently accessed data can
provide dramatic performance improvements and eliminate the need to store all of an application’s data on SSD.

Lab Validation: SanDisk FlashSoft 5
© 2012 by The Enterprise Strategy Group, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
ESG Lab Validation
ESG Lab validated prior performance testing and performed remote hands-on evaluation of a FlashSoft
implementation via a lab located at the Milpitas, California, SanDisk facility. Using industry-standard tools and
methodologies, ESG Lab conducted testing that was designed to demonstrate integration with VMware features,
ease of management, performance scalability, and the ability to increase virtual machine density.
Getting Started
The test bed consisted of one Dell R810 server with VMware ESX, one Dell R720 server with VMware ESX, and two
Dell R710 servers in an ESX cluster. These hosts were configured with 180GB of LSI WarpDrive PCIe SSD storage. All
servers were connected via iSCSI SAN to a storage array with 24 x 15K RPM SAS drives. The VMware vCenter
Management Interface was connected via LAN to the vSphere server.
Figure 3. FlashSoft Test Bed
ESG Lab Testing
Installing the FlashSoft application into a VMware ESX cluster was extremely simple, and the task was performed
without disruption to the cluster. First, using VMware vMotion, the virtual machines were moved from the first Dell
R710 node to the second. Next, the FlashSoft ESX kernel module was installed on the first host (now containing no
VMs). Following that step, the VMs were moved back to node 1 using vMotion, and FlashSoft was then installed on
the second Dell R710. Service from the cluster was not interrupted at any point during installation. Figure 4 shows
output from the command line interface as install file uncompression and installation was occurring.

Lab Validation: SanDisk FlashSoft 6
© 2012 by The Enterprise Strategy Group, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Figure 4. Installation Procedure
When the installation was complete, a FlashSoft tab appeared in the vCenter console. Figure 5 shows the vCenter
dashboard view. The “Status of the system” box shows that SSDs and licenses are all set for the ESX cluster. In the
“Utilization” area, cache read hits and misses are beginning to be displayed, and in the SSD area, the device name
and size appear.
Figure 5. VMware vCenter FlashSoft Management

Lab Validation: SanDisk FlashSoft 7
© 2012 by The Enterprise Strategy Group, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Why This Matters
As virtual servers become a more common implementation for mission-critical applications, they must be able
to support the high levels of application uptime and data availability required. Organizations may avoid
performance-enhancing solutions that are disruptive and require separate management, giving up business
value in order to maintain operations.
ESG Lab validated that FlashSoft for VMware vSphere can be non-disruptively installed in a running VMware
cluster. FlashSoft was easily installed into the ESX kernel in approximately 35 seconds using the standard VIB-
based installer, required no changes to storage configurations, added no footprint on the server, and remained
transparent to existing ESX software layers. Once installed, FlashSoft was available for management from the
vCenter console.
Manageability
The vCenter plug-in enables SanDisk FlashSoft acceleration to be managed directly from VMware. No other
management software is required, and the full functionality of all VMware features is available through a tab in the
vCenter GUI. FlashSoft can also accelerate snapshots at a granular level. The administrator has the option to
accelerate a base (primary) data set, individual point-in-time snapshots, or both; this level of flexibility enables the
administrator to focus acceleration wherever needed in order to optimize the performance impact.
ESG Lab Testing
ESG Lab tested the impact of FlashSoft installation on vMotion capabilities. The top picture in Figure 6
demonstrates vMotion in the cluster before FlashSoft was installed; ESG Lab moved a running VM from the first ESX
node in the cluster to the second node. The bottom picture shows that vMotion continued to operate normally
after FlashSoft was installed.

Lab Validation: SanDisk FlashSoft 8
© 2012 by The Enterprise Strategy Group, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Figure 6. VMware vMotion with FlashSoft
FlashSoft can accelerate snapshots to speed data management activities. While other solutions may accelerate
performance only for the primary dataset or the entire volume, FlashSoft can apply acceleration to individual
snapshots as well as the base dataset. Figure 7 shows the granularity with which FlashSoft can apply acceleration;
any primary copy or snapshot in the tree structure can be designated for acceleration.

Lab Validation: SanDisk FlashSoft 9
© 2012 by The Enterprise Strategy Group, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Figure 7. Acceleration Target Selection
The FlashSoft tab also enables administrators to monitor performance from within vCenter. Read hits, misses, and
operations are displayed graphically, with some statistics listed in table format as well (see Figure 8).
Figure 8. Performance Monitoring

Lab Validation: SanDisk FlashSoft 10
© 2012 by The Enterprise Strategy Group, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Why This Matters
As virtualization expands in a data center, the traditionally separate infrastructure domains begin to converge.
Suddenly, instead of a clear definition of tasks assigned to each domain, the server administrator may be taking
actions that affect storage, and separate management tools can add complexity and mask a holistic view. When
ESG asked virtualization users what developments would enable more widespread use of server virtualization,
application, server, storage, network, and security personnel mentioned better integration of tools across
infrastructure domains and the need for virtualization-aware management tools.2
ESG Lab validated the ease of managing FlashSoft acceleration from within the vCenter console and confirmed that
vMotion operated normally after FlashSoft implementation. Administrators can view the FlashSoft performance
chart from within vCenter, making acceleration details easily accessible alongside other virtual server management
information.
ESG Lab also confirmed that FlashSoft can accelerate primary data sets, individual snapshots, or both to improve
performance. This feature is particularly beneficial for improving business productivity for test and development,
backup, VDI, and other multi-copy use cases. Accelerating test snapshots can enable more test iterations to be
completed in less time, clone acceleration can keep virus scans from slowing performance, and accelerating
snapshots for backup can prevent data protection from interrupting business operations.
2Source: ESG Research Report, The Evolution of Server Virtualization, November 2010.

Lab Validation: SanDisk FlashSoft 11
© 2012 by The Enterprise Strategy Group, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Application Performance
Application performance was measured by comparing the performance of VMs running an OLTP test workload on
an unaccelerated baseline system to an accelerated system using FlashSoft software with SSD. The OLTP workload
was tested on a pair of VMs using HDDs only; then it was compared to the same pair of VMs with FlashSoft
software and an SSD read cache target added. Typical database performance metrics were captured and analyzed
for both configurations.
ESG Lab Testing
ESG Lab began performance testing by running an OLTP workload on two VMs configured with HDD data stores.
The data stores hosted the OLTP application. Testing was run in an HDD-only configuration and then repeated with
FlashSoft-managed SSD acceleration enabled. Figure 9 shows the transactions-per-minute performance benefit of
FlashSoft acceleration over the HDD-only configuration.
Figure 9. OLTP Transactions per Minute
What the Numbers Mean
•The OTLTP application was configured with a 4,500 customer database.
•The OLTP application was configured with 95 connections.
•The OLTP application with FlashSoft was able to achieve an average of 4x more transactions per minute
than the HDD-only configuration.

Lab Validation: SanDisk FlashSoft 12
© 2012 by The Enterprise Strategy Group, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Next, ESG Lab explored the effects of acceleration on database batch requests. Using the same OLTP workload
described in the transactions-per-minute testing, ESG Lab captured and analyzed average batch request numbers
before and after acceleration. Figure 10 shows the average batch requests per second for the same pair of VMs
with an HDD-only configuration compared with adding FlashSoft acceleration with SSD.
Figure 10. Database Batch Requests
What the Numbers Mean
•The FlashSoft configuration was able to handle 3.5xmore batch requests per second.
Why This Matters
By aggregating multiple workloads on physical servers, virtualization often increases the randomization of I/O,
which can create storage bottlenecks that affect application performance. While performance problems are never
welcome, the increasing consumerization of IT raises the expectations of users and decreases their tolerance for
slowing of application and data access. In addition, many organizations resist placing tier-1 applications on virtual
servers for fear that workload aggregation will slow performance. ESG research on virtualization revealed that after
budget concerns and lack of legacy application support, performance issues were the key concern preventing
organizations from expanding their virtualization deployments.3
ESG Lab validated the ability of FlashSoft for VMware vSphere to accelerate the transaction performance of a
MySQL database by 4x over an HDD-only solution. ESG believes that this level of performance improvement can
enable organizations to migrate more business-critical applications to virtual machines without hindering
application performance or data access.
3Source: ESG Research Report, The Evolution of Server Virtualization, November 2010.

Lab Validation: SanDisk FlashSoft 13
© 2012 by The Enterprise Strategy Group, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Density Scale
Density scale is the ability to increase the number of virtual machines running on a physical server while still
delivering the performance required to efficiently run a mix of workloads typically encountered in current
enterprise compute environments. For density testing, ESG Lab leveraged a number of workloads, including an
application server, web server, mail server, and supporting database and infrastructure servers. The servers were
grouped together in tiles containing six servers each. The performance was measured on the application, web and
mail servers, as the number of tiles was scaled.
ESG Lab Testing
ESG Lab began density testing by simply measuring the number of VMs that could be run on a given server before
and after acceleration, while maintaining manageable response times for each application. Figure 11 shows the
total number of VMs (24 vs.72) for each scenario.
Figure 11. VM Density
What the Numbers Mean
•The mixed-workload environment was able to support 48 more VMs with FlashSoft vs. HDD only.
•Only 24 VMs could be supported in the HDD configuration before poor response times were observed.
•FlashSoft Improved VM density scale by 3x.
Next, ESG Lab measured the ability of the environment to handle an increased number of requests by each
application with FlashSoft acceleration enabled. Figure 12 shows the total number of requests as well as the
number of requests per application, before and after acceleration.

Lab Validation: SanDisk FlashSoft 14
© 2012 by The Enterprise Strategy Group, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Figure 12. VM Workload
What the Numbers Mean
•FlashSoft achieved a performance gain of 3x more requests per second than the HDD-only configuration.
•All applications demonstrated a significant and fairly evenly balanced performance gain.
Why This Matters
Storage I/O performance in a virtual environment affects more than just application speed. Faster IOPS enable
organizations to increase the virtual-to-physical server consolidation ratio—that is, the VM density on each physical
machine. A lack of adequate performance inhibits the consolidation ratio, which directly affects the potential
savings available from consolidation as well as constraining virtualization expansion. If you can scale the number of
applications on each host while maintaining performance SLAs, you can scale the application capacity of your data
center without adding hardware. This approach not only enables greater data center productivity without
increasing capital and operational expense, but it also increases the opportunity to virtualize tier-1 applications.
Using a tile-based benchmark methodology, ESG Lab validated the VM density scalability that FlashSoft for VMware
vSphere enabled. The testing demonstrated scalability to 72 VMs (a 3x improvement), which was able to satisfy
more than 2,100 requests per second for a combination of application, web, and e-mail applications.

Lab Validation: SanDisk FlashSoft 15
© 2012 by The Enterprise Strategy Group, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
ESG Lab Validation Highlights
SanDisk FlashSoft was installed easily and non-disruptively in approximately 35 seconds into an ESX host,
with status and SSD utilization details immediately available in a new vCenter tab.
ESG was able to accelerate both base data and snapshot targets by selecting objects from a device list for
each VM. We were pleased to see the ability to accelerate not only the primary data copy, but also
snapshot copies. This can be extremely useful in test and development and VDI environments.
ESG Lab was able to scale the VM density of a mixed-workload environment to 72 virtual machines on a
single Dell R810 server with FlashSoft. With an HDD-only configuration, the environment could only scale to
24 virtual machines. This represents a 3x increase in VM density.
ESG confirmed the ability of FlashSoft to improve OLTP application performance significantly. We observed
a 4x improvement in transactions per minute and a 3.5x improvement in batch request processing over the
same configuration with HDD-only devices.
Issues to Consider
Although management was well integrated into VMware vCenter and no agent had to be installed on the
guest machine to utilize FlashSoft software, VMs marked for acceleration needed to be restarted to initiate
caching. ESG Lab hopes to see the requirement removed in a future release of the product.
To improve support for VDI environments, ESG Lab believes the ability to implement write caching with
FlashSoft would greatly enhance its ability to address other challenging virtual infrastructure I/O situations.
The lab hopes to see the feature incorporated in a future release.

Lab Validation: SanDisk FlashSoft 16
© 2012 by The Enterprise Strategy Group, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
The Bigger Truth
Both server virtualization and solid-state disk deployments appear to be moving into the next wave of greater
customer adoption. Server virtualization has clearly demonstrated significant business value in reducing both OPEX
and CAPEX, and as a result has reigned for three years running as the top priority in ESG’s annual IT spending
intentions survey.4Customers have moved past the initial efficiency gains and are virtualizing more mission-critical
applications; in addition, they are leveraging virtualization to gain mobility and agility across the enterprise.
However, the workload aggregation of virtual server environments can cause storage I/O bottlenecks in traditional
storage environments by creating an “I/O blender” effect—multiple types and sizes of workloads can jam disk
spindles by overloading the number of IOPS they can handle. This overload not only affects application
performance, but also restricts the ability to increase VM density for both virtual deployment expansion and
greater savings. The performance problem is a show-stopper that prevents many organizations from moving
business-critical applications to virtual machines.
Solid-state disk usage is also on the rise—ESG research with North American IT professionals conducted in 2011
indicated that more than one-third (34%) of respondents were already using SSD, while 17% had plans to add SSD
within the year, and another 18% were in the evaluation phase. Only 17% of respondents had no interest or
familiarity with the technology.5This research indicated that cost remains the primary impediment to solid-state
adoption, with performance the primary benefit.
SSD can improve I/O performance in virtualized environments, but manual placement of SSD by application is
unreliable. At the same time, dedicating entire arrays to SSD can be not only expensive, but also wasteful; a full SSD
array is overkill when only 10% to 20% of data stores need that level of performance. In addition, many
organizations cannot add SSD capacity to their storage implementations because of incompatibility, and they
cannot deploy an SSD-compatible storage platform without jeopardizing current efforts related to compliance, data
security, backup, disaster recovery, etc.
SanDisk offers a way out of that morass with its FlashSoft for VMware vSphere software. FlashSoft provides
organizations with the opportunity to take advantage of SSD performance on the server side, managed
automatically, while they maintain their existing storage implementations. ESG Lab found FlashSoft for VMware
vSphere easy to install and manage through the vCenter console. Using FlashSoft software-based read cache with
heterogeneous SSDs, ESG Lab validated not only a significant increase in application performance, but also a
significant increase in virtual machine scalability. FlashSoft was easy to install and was able to accelerate workloads
without restricting any VMware features.
By improving I/O performance without manual intervention, SanDisk FlashSoft can enable organizations to expand
their virtual server deployments while speeding application performance, and still gain the benefits of consolidation
that translate into both capital and operational cost savings. The ease of implementing FlashSoft in a VMware
environment makes the proposition especially appealing.
4Source: ESG Research Report, 2012 IT Spending Intentions Survey, January 2012.
5Source: ESG Research Report, Solid-state Storage Market Trends, November 2011.

Lab Validation: SanDisk FlashSoft 17
© 2012 by The Enterprise Strategy Group, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Appendix
Table 1. ESG Lab Test Bed
Servers
Dell PowerEdge R720
Model: R720
CPU: Intel Xeon E5-2660
Processor Cores: 16 cores
Processor Speed: 2.2 GHz
RAM: 128GB
Dell PowerEdge R810
Model: R810
CPU: Intel Xeon E7-4860
Processor Cores: 40 cores
Processor Speed: 2.27 GHz
RAM: 256GB
Dell PowerEdge R710
Model: R710
CPU: Intel Xeon 5500
Processor Cores: 4
Processor Speed: 2.2 GHz
RAM: 48GB
Storage
Dell PowerVault
Model: MD3220
Drives: 24 x 300GB 10K RPM
Type: 6Gb/sec SAS
RAID Level: RAID-0
Dell PowerVault
Model: MD3220
Drives: 24 x 146GB 15K RPM
Type: 6Gb/sec SAS
PCI SSD Controller
LSI WarpDrive PCIe
Applications and Operating Systems
VMware
Version: ESXi 5.0.0
Web Server
Apache 2.2.15
Application Server
Oracle GlassFish Server v3.1.1
Mail Server
Dovecot 2.0.9
Database Server
PostgresSQL 9.1.3

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