Blog Archives

How Do I Know My SQL Server Environment is Ready for SSD?

Posted on January 21, 2014 by George Crump

SQL Databases of almost any size should be a top consideration for SSD integration. Because of the granularity of the database structure small components of the database can be moved to SSD, reducing the overall SSD investment. In this article, Storage Switzerland’s Lead Analyst, George Crump discusses how to determine which of those componets should be on SSD. This report will show that a surprisingly small amount of SSD can provide a cost effective, more scaleable, higher performing database for the entire environment.

Learn:
Which Storage Statistics Can Help You Determine SQL SSD Readiness
Which component of your SQL environment should be on SSD
The ROI of SSD Investment for SQL Environments

Tagged with: CPU, Flash, I/O, MLC, SLC, SolarWinds, SQL, SSD, Utilization
Posted in Article

The Right Way To Write Cache

Posted on January 14, 2014 by George Crump

Using flash based solid state disk drives (SSDs) installed in a server as cache is probably the most popular way for IT professionals to address performance problems. Most caching solutions are read-only caches, however, meaning that the other half of…

Tagged with: Cache, I/O, Intel, Server-side, SSD, Write-back
Posted in Blog

How to Use SSD to Rescue Performance without Breaking the Bank

Posted on January 13, 2014 by George Crump

IT professionals wear many hats and are constantly responding to the emergency of the moment. When performance problems appear in the virtual environment the default reaction is to throw hardware at the problem. That means “throwing” premium priced flash SSD at it. But this approach can lead to buying too much or too little SSD, which either wastes money or doesn’t effectively solve the performance problem. In this article Storage Switzerland’s lead analyst George Crump, leads you through the process of qualifying your virtual environment’s SSD suitability.

Tagged with: Data center, I/O, performance, SolarWinds, SSD, Virtual
Posted in Blog

Is QoS Enough to Ensure Virtualized Application Performance?

Posted on January 8, 2014 by Colm Keegan

An increasing number of vendors are offering quality of service (QoS) capabilities for their storage systems. But the ability for these system to assure storage performance quality to mission critical applications is suspect at best. Guaranteeing virtualized application performance requires more than QoS, it requires a scalable storage infrastructure that understands specific virtual machine performance requirements.

In this article Storage Switzerland Senior Analyst, Colm Keegan provides the details on how a storage system has to go beyond QoS to provide complete application performance.

Tagged with: Gridstore, Hyper-V, I/O, Infrastructure, QOS, Virtualization
Posted in Article

How to Prevent Noisy Neighbors

Posted on January 7, 2014 by Colm Keegan

In response to my recent article, “What Is A Noisy Neighbor”, one of our reader’s asked if limiting the number of IOPS (via VSphere) on all but the most disk I/O intensive VMs would be a good approach for reducing…

Tagged with: Flash, Hypervisor, I/O, IOPS, QOS, SSD, Virtual machine
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What Is A Noisy Neighbor?

Posted on December 20, 2013 by Colm Keegan

The term “noisy neighbor” in the storage context refers to a rogue virtual machine (VM) that periodically monopolizes storage I/O resources to the performance detriment of all the other VM “tenants” in the environment. This phenomenon can become more pervasive…

Tagged with: Disk array, FIFO, Flash, I/O, LUN, PCIe, Solid-state drive, Virtual machine
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Is PCIe SSD Always Faster?

Posted on February 8, 2012 by George Crump

As Solid State Disk (SSD) has evolved many ways have been developed for it to be accessed by the applications that need performance acceleration. The connection between the application and the SSD is often made by the most available, least…

Tagged with: I/O, PCIe, SSD, storage system, Texas Memory
Posted in Article

What Is RAID – Part 1

Posted on November 4, 2011 by Joseph Ortiz

This article on RAID – Part 1, is one of an ongoing series of articles in the Storage Switzerland “What Is” series. These articles provide a refresher on key fundamentals of various storage technologies, for those who are new to,…

Tagged with: ECC, I/O, Mirroring, RAID, Redundancy
Posted in Article