Previously I talked about rumours that 3Par was to get an additional caching layer, this week the rumours have been confirmed by the emergence of a technology HP is calling 3PAR Adaptive Flash Cache. So here is what it’s all about in a quick 10 point summary:
- HP Adaptive Flash Cache extends the existing on-board DRAM cache held within the controllers by utilising SSD’s.
- The SSD layer is essentially used as an overflow once the on-board DRAM becomes 90% full
- A larger caching area will mean more data can be held in cache, in theory increasing the number of requests that can be served from cache resulting in improved response times and application performance
- Between 2TB and 768GB per controller of SSD space can be utilised by Adaptive Flash Cache depending on model
- The additional caching layer will be available to reads only, writes will continue to be serviced exclusively by on-board DRAM cache
- Adaptive Flash Cache will be bundled as part of the HP 3PAR Operating System Suite from version 3.2.1 onwards
- It will be available across 3Par models that support a mixture of SSD’s and HDD’s
- A minimum of 4 SSD’s are required
- Can work in conjunction with AO
- Flash Cache has a simulation mode so you see if it your workload would benefit from the increased cache size without needing any SSD’s present
You can read more about it my Adaptive Flash Cache Deep Dive.
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