The Promise of NVMe Flexible Data Placement in Data Center Sustainability

Wed Sep 18 | 11:35am
Location:
Winchester
Abstract

By 2040, data centers could account for up to ~14% of all carbon emissions worldwide. Flash SSDs contribute to data center carbon emissions due to their limited endurance. The common practice of over-provisioning Flash SSDs to control write amplification, improve lifetime and optimize for total cost of ownership of data centers is inefficient and contributes to the carbon footprint. Considering the increased focus on data center climate impact and net-zero carbon goals, improving Flash SSD lifetime and utilization are key to reducing carbon emissions. Targeted data placement on SSDs is known to reduce write amplification and improve lifetime. The latest data placement technology - NVMe Flexible Data Placement (FDP), shows great promise in reducing carbon emissions with minimal engineering effort. Providing control to applications to place their data with NVMe FDP results in more informed data placement strategies with minimal modifications to the application stack. Consequently, this leads to reduced SSD write amplification and enables better utilization. In this talk, we explore NVMe FDP’s future in Data Center Sustainability by showcasing its ability to reduce embodied (endurance) and operational (power) carbon emissions for systems at scale. We use several example workloads and CacheLib - a deployed system at scale, to illustrate the impact and reduction in carbon emissions with NVMe FDP.

Learning Objectives

Upon completion, participants will be have a clear picture of how Flash SSDs contribute to data center carbon emissions. Additionally, a participant will be able to understand the impact of write amplification and over-provisioning on the carbon footprint of data centers.
Upon completion, participants will understand how NVMe FDP can prolong SSD lifetime and improve utilization. Additionally, participants will leave with an analysis of the reduction to embodied carbon emissions that come from using NVMe FDP. Participants will have an opportunity to see data from various example workloads that illustrate these impacts.
Upon completion, participants will be able to explain the impact of NVMe FDP in reducing SSD power consumption and operational carbon emissions. Furthermore, participants will leave with knowledge on the impact of SSD garbage collection events on SSD power consumption. Participants will have an opportunity to see data from various example workloads that illustrate these impacts.
Upon completion, participants will have a clear picture of the overall carbon emissions reductions, both embodied and operational, that is achieved with a widely deployed system at scale - CacheLib with minimal engineering effort.
Finally, participants of the session will get a sense of how NVMe FDP can be used with minimal modifications to the application stack for various systems at scale to optimize data center carbon emissions that come from the use of Flash-based SSDs.

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Roshan Nair
Samsung Semiconductor India Research
  • Arun George
    Samsung Semiconductor India Research Ltd, Bangalore
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