展望由非易失性設備構成的未來存儲
“願你生活的時代充滿趣味”。不知您是否注意到，而今的IT世界已然如此，充斥着諸如雲、移動、大數據、內存數據庫、NoSQL、遠程直接內存訪問（RDMA）、疊瓦式磁記錄（SMR）硬盤、非易失性存儲（NVM）以及其他不勝列數的新技術。正是由於這些新科技與技術讓使用者能以更精簡的資源來實現更爲強大的功能，我們面臨的世界正經歷着天翻地覆的變化。這樣的變革對現有的行業既是一種威脅，但另一方面，對於敏捷、專注而果敢的公司而言，恰恰是難得的機遇。
對於存儲行業的公司來講，NVM是一支無可匹敵的變革力量。硬盤驅動器（HDD）盤踞存儲介質層已長達數十年，隨着時間的推移，速度日漸不足（尤其是按照每GB來計算）、容量日益龐大而價格日下，閃存固態盤（SSD）赫然出現，改變了一切：微妙級的延遲帶來數量級的改善；爲提升性能而設置的一排排主軸由整架的SSD所取代；功耗、散熱及噪聲等方面均大幅降低；同時，已經佔據統治地位的大公司也受到了來自初創公司的巨大挑戰。
但是，NVM其實是內存，而大家一直在講NVM作爲外部存儲如何如何！正如我的同事StephenBates曾經指出的, “不要再將NVM看成快速存儲，而把它當作（較慢的）內存“。在現下的新世界中，當CPU可以直接訪問永久性存儲時，計算機的架構就可以重新設計和想象。這不再是科幻小說的情節，MIT的聰明人已經驗證了帶有閃存內存的20臺服務器的性能完全堪比配有DRAM的40臺服務器。這項實驗昭示着未來的方向。
這一趨勢對於客戶而言，影響十分深長，因爲其意味着客戶在基礎設施上的投入將得到怎樣的回報。然而，這場變革需要在整個生態圈中全面的革新，從應用一直到設備層面。讓我們攜手努力吧！
Re-imagining Storage with Non-Volatile Memory
“May you live in interesting times.” Ifyou haven’t noticed, IT is already there, with cloud, mobile, big data,in-memory, NoSQL, Remote Direct Memory Access (RDMA), Shingled MagneticRecording (SMR) drives, Non-Volatile Memory (NVM), and the list goes on. Ourlandscape is undergoing massive disruption as new technologies and techniquesenable customers to do more with less. This disruption is a threat toexisting businesses, and an opportunity for the fast, the focused, and thebold.
For those of us in the storage business, there is nobigger disruption than NVM. After decades of hard disk drives (HDDs)owning the storage media layer, getting slower (particularly on aper-GB-basis), fatter and cheaper each year, along came flash solid statedrives (SSDs) to change everything: milliseconds of latency improved byorders of magnitude; racks of spindles for performance replaced with a shelf ofSSDs; power, heat and noise reduced significantly; and incumbents disrupted bystart-ups.
But NVM is memory, and we’ve justbeen talking about NVM as storage! As my colleague Stephen Bates hasnoted before, “Let’s stopthinking about NVM as fast storage and start thinking about it as (slow)memory.” In this new world, computer architectures canbe re-imagined, with data available in persistent memory right off theCPU. This isn’t science fiction. The bright folks at MIT haverecently demonstrated 20 servers with flash memory performing as well as 40servers with DRAM. This is a harbinger of thingsto come.
This will have profound implicationsfor what customers get for the money they put into theirinfrastructure. However,
it requires changes throughout the stack, fromapplications to devices. Let’s get to work!