This document discusses the use of solid state drives (SSDs) in servers to improve performance, reduce costs, and increase reliability compared to spinning hard disk drives (HDDs). It summarizes three main uses of SSDs: 1) replacing boot disks to speed up applications, 2) replacing disks in high input/output systems, and 3) using SSDs as a fast virtual memory paging device. It then provides details on IBM's 50GB high input/output SSD options for servers and blades, and 160GB/320GB PCIe SSD adapters that provide even higher performance than SATA/SAS attached SSDs.

1. System x® and BladeCenter®
Key uses for SSDs in servers today
1. To replace spinning boot disks to improve application performance, power
consumption, reliability, etc.
Boot disks – Low cost SSD - better reliability, good read performance
High performance databases, web/e-Mail servers – High performance SSDs can replace many HDDs
Note: All Flash/SSD is not created equal! Consumer flash technology (USB memory sticks, MP3s) is
cheap but lacks enterprise class durability, reliability, data protection – write cache protection, wear
data leveling, etc.
2. To replace spinning disks in High IOPs storage systems for improved
performance of high transaction applications
Each SSD can deliver the same IOPs performance as dozens of traditional spinning disks
Reduction in storage acquisition cost and lower ongoing power & cooling cost
Improved application performance for local database and IOPs constrained environments
3. As a fast virtual memory paging device to reduce need for expensive main
memory DIMMs
Possible reduction in server acquisition costs and lowering ongoing power and cooling costs.
Big reduction in server cost with small reduction in application performance. Results are
application/workload dependent
More usages will come as enterprise SSDs continue to improve in price and
performance…
© 2010 IBM Corporation 1

2. IBM Modular and Blade Systems
IBM 50GB High IOPS SSD for System x Servers and Blades
4K Multi-Threaded Random Read/Write Workload
High IO Performance (67% Read, 33% Writes, 100% Random)
– Up to 8X IOPS more than HDD
3000
– Media streaming, surveillance, file copy, logging, 2600
backup/recovery, business intelligence apps 2500
Lower cost IOPS Performance than HDD 2000
– Lower $/IOPS, less power and smaller footprint
IOps
1500
required to reach performance target
1000
Superior Uptime
– 3X the availability of mechanical drives with 500 291 372
RAID-1 – no moving parts to fail 41
0
– Enterprise wear leveling to extend life even 4K
further Transfer Size (bytes)
Flexible Deployment With Full OS Support 146GB SAS Drive Savio 10K.2 (FW B522) 73GB SAS Drive Savio 15K.2 (FW B612)
32GB SATA Flash SSD 50GB MACH8 IOPS SSD
– Traditional HDD form factor offering
– Supported in servers or EXP3000 disk IBM High IOPS SSD
enclosures
Name Part Number Support
IBM 50GB SATA 3.5" HS High IOPS SSD 43W7698 EXP3000 with MR10M
IBM 50GB SATA 2.5" SFF NHS High IOPS SSD 43W7706 HS21XM, LS22, LS42
IBM 50GB SATA 2.5" SFF Slim-HS High IOPS SSD 43W7714 HS22, 3550-M2, x3650-M2 50GB SATA 2.5" Slim HS High IOPS SSD
IBM 50GB SATA 2.5" SFF HS High IOPS SSD 43W7722 3850-M2 & 3950-M2 Available today
2 © 2010 IBM Corporation

3. IBM Modular and Blade Systems
High Performance SSDs for DS5000/8000 & SVC
STEC Zeus-IOPS FC & SAS SSDs
– 73, 146, 300, and 600GB capacities
– Recognized leader for external storage
– Meets IBM’s enterprise drive requirements
SSD benefits
– Increased small-block I/O performance – up to 80000 IOPs each
– Up to 350MB/s for streaming applications
– Lower power usage – up to 80% decrease
– Dramatic reduction in system space for equivalent I/O
3 © 2010 IBM Corporation

4. System x® and BladeCenter®
High IOPS SSD PCIe Adapters
Superior solution to enterprise disk drives for applications sustaining high
operations per second – e.g. database, data warehouse, stream analytics
Based on fast growing NAND flash
technology
Standard PCIe form factor supports
rack/tower servers and blades (via
PEU/BPE3)
Available in 160GB and 320GB
capacities (640GB coming soon)
Typically higher IOPs and MB/s
performance than SATA/SAS/FC
160GB SLC 160GB SLC
random sequential attached SSDs
(IBM measured) (IBM measured)
Must be mirrored via software to
4K Read 108,031 IOPS 128,509 IOPS
provide data protection against an
32K Read 744 MBps 754 MBps
adapter failure
32K Write 492 MBps 635 MBps
Typically lowest cost per IOP vs.
traditional SSDs
© 2010 IBM Corporation 4

5. System x® and BladeCenter®
Comparing SSD form factor – disk drive vs. PCI-E
Disk drive: PCIe adapter:
Low cost SSDs are good for boot - Adapter looks like a single disk to
can exceed HDD performance on the OS and application.
reads, though slow on writes
Can provide higher IOPs than
High performance SSDs are 100- SSD due to higher bandwidth of
1000x faster in random workloads PCIe vs. SAS, SATA, and FC
than HDDs, but cost 10-100x more
per GB Mirror 2 adapters using software
for fault tolerance - can be costly
Can be used like HDDs in RAID
arrays for fault tolerance and/or data Direct sharing of the adapter/data
sharing by >1 server typically not
possible.
RAID adapters/controllers can limit
performance when many SSDs are
used per adapter
© 2010 IBM Corporation 5