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posted by janrinok on Friday September 06 2019, @01:41AM   Printer-friendly

Samsung Announces Standards-Compliant Key-Value SSD Prototype

Samsung has announced a new prototype key-value SSD that is compatible with the first industry standard API for key-value storage devices. Earlier this year, the Object Drives working group of Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA) published version 1.0 of the Key Value Storage API Specification. Samsung has added support for this new API to their ongoing key-value SSD project.

Most hard drives and SSDs expose their storage capacity through a block storage interface, where the drive stores blocks of a fixed size (typically 512 bytes or 4kB) and they are identified by Logical Block Addresses that are usually 48 or 64 bits. Key-value drives extend that model so that a drive can support variable-sized keys instead of fixed-sized LBAs, and variable-sized values instead of fixed 512B or 4kB blocks. This allows a key-value drive to be used more or less as a drop-in replacement for software key-value databases like RocksDB, and as a backend for applications built atop key-value databases.

Key-value SSDs have the potential to offload significant work from a server's CPUs when used to replace a software-based key-value database. More importantly, moving the key-value interface into the SSD itself means it can be tightly integrated with the SSD's flash translation layer, cutting out the overhead of emulating a block storage device and layering a variable-sized storage system on top of that. This means key-value SSDs can operate with much lower write amplification and higher performance than software key-value databases, with only one layer of garbage collection in the stack instead of one in the SSD and one in the database.


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  • (Score: 2) by DannyB on Friday September 06 2019, @04:59PM (6 children)

    by DannyB (5839) Subscriber Badge on Friday September 06 2019, @04:59PM (#890611) Journal

    <no-sarcasm>
    How about an SSD that offers a SQL / DDL interface?

    How about an SSD that offers a file server style API ? (eg, you don't know, don't care what underlying file system is used within the SSD, the interface to it is more like NFS or CIFS or some such)

    I thought it important here to use no-sarcasm tags. Why doesn't SN offer such useful tags?
    </no-sarcasm>

    As long as they keep the SSD from having too much vibration.

    What about nvme with similar interfaces?

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 06 2019, @08:23PM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 06 2019, @08:23PM (#890694)

    SQL / DDL would be too complex for something like a disk. Last thing I want is my unaudited and maybe never updated disk controller software parsing something as complex as SQL. Same with the file-server API, hardware should be as dumb as possible. Adding something like NFS, CIFS or whatever adds complexity with no benefit.

    But to your last point, drives are already K-V stores if you think about it. They take a value in, like LBA or CHS, and spit out a value. It is just in this case, they can have arbitrary-sized values instead of being fixed at the sector and having the top layer do it. The SSD already has to map the request to the flash block, so this isn't that much more of a complication compared to that.

    Other benefits I've noticed is that this supports partitions out of the box through key groups. It specifies APIs that work alongside SATA, SCSI, and NVMe protocols. And, as a transition, you can use these drives with "sectors" as the keys instead of the key-value calls.

    • (Score: 2) by DannyB on Sunday September 08 2019, @09:21PM

      by DannyB (5839) Subscriber Badge on Sunday September 08 2019, @09:21PM (#891405) Journal

      SQL / DDL would be too complex for something like a disk.

      It is too complex for a disk. But not too complex for a computer plus a disk.

      The case of a key-value store must actually be a computer plus a disk. Because keys and values can be arbitrary values of arbitrary length.

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  • (Score: 2) by acid andy on Saturday September 07 2019, @11:33AM (3 children)

    by acid andy (1683) on Saturday September 07 2019, @11:33AM (#890930) Homepage Journal

    <no-sarcasm>
    I thought it important here to use no-sarcasm tags. Why doesn't SN offer such useful tags?
    </no-sarcasm>

    <sarcasm>
    <no-sarcasm>
    Because nesting them within sarcasm tags would be such a delightfully useful feature, giving rise to prose utterly devoid of ambiguity.
    </no-sarcasm>
    </sarcasm>

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    • (Score: 2) by DannyB on Sunday September 08 2019, @09:19PM (2 children)

      by DannyB (5839) Subscriber Badge on Sunday September 08 2019, @09:19PM (#891404) Journal

      But they're not nested.

      Your first pair is this . . .

      <sarcasm>
      <no-sarcasm>

      Your second pair is malformed by having the slash in each tag.

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      • (Score: 2) by acid andy on Monday September 09 2019, @01:10PM (1 child)

        by acid andy (1683) on Monday September 09 2019, @01:10PM (#891661) Homepage Journal

        You've lost me, sorry. It's valid markup. Was it a joke I didn't get?

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        • (Score: 2) by DannyB on Monday September 09 2019, @01:25PM

          by DannyB (5839) Subscriber Badge on Monday September 09 2019, @01:25PM (#891673) Journal

          Yes, a joke.

          Sarcasm, then No-Sarcasm considered a matched pair. One turns on sarcasm mode, the other turns it off. Obviously not how you actually write tags.

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