As previously blogged I’ve done a bit of research and posts on PCIe storage solutions starting in 6/2011 here as well as here, here, here, and here.

“Do I need it?” …plus how do measure for this?

I run a presales organization that philosophically approaches our clients and organizations with a consultative, hopefully scientific approach.  With the advent of PCIe storage jumping onto the scene I get asked the same question different ways; “Do I need it?”  or  different variations like “How much of it do I need?”  To answer that question requires either great guess work or luck; neither is scalable for helping clients.

EMC to the rescue?

I had a great meeting with Ken Grohe, the new GM of EMC’s Flash Business, as a follow up to my blog posts thanks to Chuck Hollis (@chuckhollis).  Ken provided me with the answer to my key question; “What tools do you have for presales?”  Ken has gratiously shared some early insights into what EMC has equipped their internal engineers with and the partner community like Nexus Information Systems.

There are currently 2 sizing/predicting tools for VFCache. One developed to incorporate FAST, the other one is based on the model below. The FAST tool has been released to the SPEED community for internal use only. The one below called PREDICTOR we can use today through the VFCacheDealDesk and you can show the results for your customer base if you have the variables.

As an example, here is the user interface:

This shows the new EMC Predictor tool to analyze application workload for sizing and qualifying PCIe Flash Storage.

This shows application iops vs a hit rate.

This shows the application iop rate vs. estimated hit rate.

This shows what normalized latency would be with VFCache vs. hit rate.

Summary

The age is just dawning for this segment.  A ton of vendors are popping up in the industry to grab some of this new market.  We are just beginning our journey with the tools shown above so if you have question please comment in this post but also reach out to me at knorbie@nexusmn.com or your local EMC TC.