DATASHEET

Hitachi Accelerated Flash (HAF) integrated with Hitachi Storage

Virtualization Operating System (SVOS) enables leading, real-application
performance, lower effective cost, and superior consistent response times.
Running on Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform (VSP) family systems, HAF with
SVOS enables sub-millisecond delivery of 99.6% of transactions.

Hitachi Accelerated Flash

Built From the Ground
Up for Real Enterprise
Workloads
Flash technology has
All-Flash
become more common in
White Paper
the data center over the
past few years. However,
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high costs, limited bandwidth, controller bottlenecks
due to increasing loads, and sporadic
response time increases have hampered
its full adoption with real enterprise workloads. Software as a service, large-scale
transaction processing, online transaction
processing (OLTP) databases and online
analytical processes can tax data center
capabilities. IT organizations have been
forced to make tradeoffs in performance and
efficiency to reach the cost points that their
shrinking budgets can accommodate.
Hitachi Storage Virtualization Operating
System integrated with Hitachi Accelerated
Flash fundamentally changes this paradigm.
Together, they eliminate these tradeoffs and
answer demands for high performance,
predictable sub-millisecond response time
at the lowest effective cost1. The second
generation of flash module drive (FMD DC2)
in HAF is built from the ground up to support
concurrent, large I/O enterprise workloads
and enable hyperscale efficiencies. At its
core is an advanced embedded multicore
flash controller that increases the performance of multilayer cell (MLC) flash to levels

TABLE 1. HITACHI STORAGE-ENHANCED OPERATING SYSTEM

PERFORMANCE RESULTS
Hitachi Storage

Maximum IOPS
Random Reads

Maximum IOPS
Random Writes

Virtual Storage Platform G1000

4,200K

1,200K

Virtual Storage Platform G800

1,400K

285K

Virtual Storage Platform G600

800K

188K

Virtual Storage Platform G400

600K

159K

Virtual Storage Platform G200

270K

71K

that exceed levels of more costly single-level

cell (SLC) flash solid state disks (SSDs).
Its inline compression offload engine and
enhanced flash translation layer deliver up
to 80% data reduction (typically 2:1) at 10
times the speed of competitors.
For virtual servers, Hitachi Virtual Storage
Platform (VSP) family integration with VVOLs
ensures end-to-end application workload
priority and quality of service for virtual
machines. Hitachi Accelerated Flash delivers the performance, cost points and low
latency response times, even under heavy
loads, that database workloads need and
that alternative solid-state storage options
cannot match.
Hitachi Accelerated Flash comes in a
rack-optimized and highly dense design
with greater than 154TB effective capacity2
per 2U tray. IOPS performance is up to five
times better per flash device than that of
enterprise solid-state drives. You also can
choose to configure it with an Hitachi Virtual
Storage Platform family as an all-flash array
or as a hybrid-flash array.

With more than 300 flash patents, Hitachi

SVOS was engineered to accelerate the I/O
path for access to flash devices. The result
is a complete flash-accelerated refresh
of the operating system that produces significantly improved I/O processing, higher
multithreading support and faster internal
data movement. It also reduces response
times considerably. These changes combine
to triple the system performance from the
operating system alone.
Our tests of the enhanced operating system
show the outstanding performance results,
as shown in Table 1.

Business Benefits
Leading Performance, Lowest Bit
Cost, Highest Capacity and Extended
Endurance
Hitachi built this new solid-state storage
offering with a new 2U flash tray that holds
up to 12 high-density flash module drives
and associated interconnect cables (see

DATASHEET
Table 2). Hitachi Accelerated Flash delivers
outstanding value compared to enterprise
SSD. When compared to a small-form-factor
1600GB SSD, it delivers:

Up to three times the per-device random

read 8KB I/O performance.
Up to five times the per-device random
write 8KB I/O performance.

Up to 70% lower effective1 bit price.

60% lower response time at peak load3.

60 times faster formatting speed.

Superior data integrity.

TABLE 2. HITACHI ACCELERATED FLASH SPECIFICATIONS

Model

1.6TB
FMD

Form Factor

The Hitachi multicore embedded flash controller introduces multiple unique capabilities
purpose-built for enterprise workloads, lower
cost and leading quality of service.
Inline compression offload engine is a
very-large-scale integration (VLSI) engine that
enables lossless compression based on a
derivative of the LZ77 algorithm. It performs at
10 times the speed with none of the burden
associated with typical software implementations or journal-based file systems.
Workload priority access is an embedded
flash controller feature that integrates with
SVOS. Together, they ensure end-to-end
application workload quality of service, from
a virtual machine down to an individual
NAND flash chip, over typical flash background tasks such as garbage collection and
data refresh.
Data eradication is a service that will physically erase all the user data on the device,
including any bad blocks and the overprovisioning of spaces. After the eradication
is done, every cell in the FMD is read to
ensure that the eradication was completed
successfully.

1.6TB
FMD DC2

3.2TB
FMD DC2

Interface

SAS 6Gb/sec

Data Protection

SAS 12Gb/sec
T10 Data Integrity Field

Drive Tray

2U, 12 devices

Thin Provisioning Integration

Yes

Total Tray Capacity (raw capacity)

Number of Flash Chips (flash memory
chips x bus)

19.2TB
(21.1TB)

38.4TB
(42.2TB)

19.2TB
(21.1TB)

38.4TB
(42.2TB)

76.8TB
(84.7TB)

16 x 4

32 x 4

8x4

16 x 4

32 x 4

35 degrees C

40 degrees C

Power (watts)

25

Mean Time Between Failures (MTBF)

2 million hours

Data Eradication Support

Supported

Inline Compression Offload Support

N/A

Yes

Workload Priority Access Support

N/A

Yes

Single Device Sustained Performance

Percentage of IOPS Under 1ms at Peak
Load at 1ms
(60/40 read/write 8KB)

97.2%

99.6%

Random Reads 8KB (kIOPS)

100

150

Random Writes 8KB (kIOPS)

70

80

Sequential Reads (GB/sec)

1.0

2.0

Sequential Writes (GB/sec)

0.8

1.0

Note: All capacities are based on 1GB = 1,000,000,000 bytes; 1TB = 1,000GB

Zero block write avoidance capability

speeds writes and improves performance.
This algorithm compresses, in real time, any
data stream of zeros or ones by up to 100%.
It performs an inline encoding of the data in
chunk sizes of 128KB.
Enhanced data integrity corrects up to
59 bits of errors per 2KB of data, delivering
better data integrity than serial-attached
SCSI (SAS) enterprise disk drives.

Adaptive data refresh dynamically optimizes page refresh based on applied error
correction. The program lowers background
task overhead and improves sustained performance while extending flash cell longevity.

Next Steps
For more information, please visit
www.HDS.com.

Based on 1.6TB SSD OEM price and 2:1 typical compression ratio.
Based on typical 2:1 compression ratio.
3
Based on comparison with Intel SSD DC S3610 Series, March 2015 Product Specifications.
1
2

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www.HDS.com community.HDS.com

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HITACHI is a trademark or registered trademark of Hitachi, Ltd. All other trademarks, service marks, and company names are properties of their respective owners.
DS-334-F DG February 2016

6.4TB
FMD DC2

High-density rack form factor

Maximum Operating Temperature

Feature Highlights

3.2TB
FMD