Netapp Flash Pool

Flash poolNetapp Flash Pool

NetApp has introduced several important innovations since first incorporating flash technology in 2009. On the software side, we have focused on the use of intelligent caching to maximize storage infrastructure efficiency. In hardware, our innovations have focused on high performance and reliability.

Netapp Flash Pool
Flash Pool combines HDDs and SSDs within a single storage system and provides a choice of using SLC or eMLC SSD modules. Using SSD and HDD within a single aggregate allows hot data to be tiered automatically between HDD and SSD. Like Flash Cache, hot data is not “moved” to SSD; rather, a copy of the data is created in SSD. Copying data is faster than moving it, and, once hot data is ejected from the SSD, there is no need to rewrite it back to HDD.

Unlike Flash Cache, however, both reads and writes can be cached in Flash Pool SSDs. When a write operation occurs, logic determines if it would be faster to write to both SSD and HDD together or just to HDD. Conversely, when a read operation occurs, logic determines whether data should be cached to SSD or read directly from HDD without caching. In all cases, Flash Pool algorithms are speed-optimized.

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