The document presents five tips for optimizing data center performance, focusing on understanding workload, access density, hardware consolidation, and analyzing changes for increased efficiency. It emphasizes the importance of balancing performance and capacity while offering solutions that go beyond traditional configurations. The content reflects insights from Adam Roberts, a chief solutions architect at Sandisk, highlighting trends in flash memory and SSD technologies.

1. 5 Tips for Optimizing the Data Center
Adam Roberts
Chief Hardware Architect
October 2015

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This presentation contains certain forward-looking statements.
Any statement that refers to expectations, projections or other characterizations of future events or
circumstances is a forward-looking statement, including those relating to market growth for flash and
SSD, industry trends including the increased adoption of and demand for flash and SSD in various
devices, enterprise applications and data centers, future memory technology, technology transitions and
future products, including 3D NAND and its performance, cost and timing of commercial availability. This
presentation also contains information from third parties, which reflect their projections as of the date of
issuance of those statements.
Actual results may differ materially from those expressed in these forward-looking statements due to
factors detailed under the caption "Risk Factors" and elsewhere in the documents we file from time to time
with the SEC, including our annual and quarterly reports.
We undertake no obligation to update these forward-looking statements, which speak only as of the date
hereof or the date of issuance by a third party, as the case may be.
Forward Looking Statement

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Computer Engineering and Electrical Engineering Degrees from
North Carolina State University. Starting with a 6 year career in
Pharmaceutical Engineering, went on to hold various development
and strategy positions in the Enterprise Storage Industry for the
past 13 years. 5 of those years was the Head Engineer for IBM’s
System x RAID and Storage Group followed by 7 years as IBM’s
System x Flash Solutions Architect. Adam has over 120 patents
issued or pending.
Adam Roberts
Chief Solutions Architect, SanDisk
Speaker Overview

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Storage and compute together
in a single unit
Lots of units operating
in a cluster or “Cloud”
There are lots of ways to build a solution
or

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What do these examples have in common?
It doesn’t matter the configuration,
a change in one aspect of the solution
can affect the final capability of the entire solution

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What do these examples have in common?
Example:
It doesn’t matter how fast the CPU is if
the storage can’t provide data fast enough
It doesn’t matter how fast the storage is if
the CPU can’t process the data
It doesn’t matter the configuration,
a change in one aspect of the solution
can affect the final capability of the entire solution
Balance the variables to get the best result!

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Tip #1 - Understand your workload
• Don’t build a solution based on wrong workload assumptions. (Too fast or too
slow)
• Don’t let lack of workload understanding cause you to build with excessive
performance margin
• Understand the balance of performance and write endurance.

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Tip #2 - Understand the “access density” needed and
which solutions and devices can provide it

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Performance margin of SSDs allow for smooth RAID recovery
• HDDs usually have no margin for rebuilding arrays in critical mode
• No performance to spare so application suffers during rebuilds
• SSD performance margin can provide needed application performance while
rebuilding a critical array transparently in parallel
• Artificially boosting HDD access density by short stroking or using small
capacity devices cause wasted capacity and/or larger than necessary HW
footprint

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Tip #3 - HW consolidation is your friend!
Low cost NAND devices with large capacity points can allow:
• Smaller solution HW footprint
• Lower power consumption
• Reduced “Solution cost per GB”
• Better performance
• Fewer points of failure

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*$669 for 300 GB 15k SAS HDD - $6,999 list price for 3.84 TB Optimus Max - $4,000 list price for DAS enclosure **Assumes 9 watt HDD - 7 watt SSD – 100 watt enclosure

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4. Don’t get lost in the components of the data center. What
matters is the end result.
This allows for a complete reimagining of the data center!

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Solution cost and specifications are the focus as opposed
to single device specifications
• Convert a complicated circuit, or
in our case a complicated
solution, into simple basic needs
of the datacenter
• Model solutions that can
illustrate what can be done.
Open our minds to what’s
possible.
• Lets do things we have never
been able to do before
Think Thevenin or Norton equivalent circuits…….
Summarize of what’s needed for the solution and design for it! Don’t design around
functionally limited building blocks.

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With the same performance can we operate more efficiently?

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Tip #5 - Analyze and identify changes to help you fill them more
efficiently
• Don’t simply build “the same as last time”.
• Question everything. Cost, capacity, level of protection, and
performance, affect what you build.
• Example: A RAID 10 HDD solution may be used because of
HDDs performance limitations. SSD performance margins may
allow for the user to move to a capacity efficient RAID 5 solution.
• An application may have no use for SSD levels of performance but
can benefit greatly from it during failure scenarios.

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Performance margin of
SSDs vs HDD allow for RAID configuration changes
• RAID array types in servers are frequently dictated by either capacity
or performance sensitivity
• RAID 10 for performance sensitivity
• RAID 5 for capacity sensitivity
• RAID 6 to limit exposure in critical mode
– Ex. If forced to use RAID 10 to get HDD performance, SSDs can
provide similar performance with RAID 5 or RAID 6, thus saving
usable capacity
Performance versus Capacity
Vs

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Other efficiency tips for the Data Center
• In high growth areas where resources needed per server may
change over time we can benefit by resource pooling
• Remove the need to build half empty chassis
• Add resources as needed
• Remove the situation where you have to replace an out of date server
but the storage/DRAM or CPU components are still good
• HW breakdown is time consuming
• Ex. Not enough CPU capabilities but flash devices in the box
are still great

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• Do you understand why your current architecture is configured the way it
is?
• Do you really know your current workload and access density needs?
• Do you know the amount of capital expense tied to redundancy and
oversubscribed HW, like small capacity drives or short stroking?

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© 2015-2016 Western Digital Corporation or its affiliates. All rights reserved. SanDisk and the SanDisk logo are trademarks of Western
Digital Corporation or its affiliates, registered in the U.S. and other countries. Other brand names mentioned herein are for identification
purposes only and may be the trademark(s) of their respective holder(s).
Thank You!
Questions?
Adam.Roberts@SanDisk.com
@SanDiskDataCtr
@BigDataFlash itblog.sandisk.com
SanDisk Data Center Solutions