SOLUTION BRIEF
SOLUTION BRIEF

Infinidat InfiniBox® and SAS® Analytics

SAS is one of the leading analytic platforms for AI, machine learningand business intelligence. The resources required to support theSAS platform, such as CPU, memory and I/O, are very predictable
and isolated in such a way that each can be optimized to improve
performance, reliability, and availability for all phases of SAS workloads.

Optimizing SAS Performance
Of all resources that affect performance, the most influential
in any SAS environment is I/O. You can add memory or CPUs
to a server farm, but if the I/O sub-system is not capableof keeping up with the workflow, the other resources could
be under-utilized waiting for I/O to complete. It is importantwhen choosing an enterprise storage platform to look for aprovider that will perform well supporting every phase of theSAS processing cycle.

The SAS Processing Cycle
Data Access: Getting the data from a source to the SAS
environment requires large block writes to the SAS servers.

ETL: In this phase, data is then mapped, transformed andloaded into SAS data structures.

Usage: This is where the user community begins to analyze,
synthesize and distill the data to provide the answers SAS
was designed to deliver.

Each of these phases have characteristics that have vastlydifferent I/O requirements, and each utilizes the storage
system in different ways.

I/O Testing Tool: To give the end user a sense for whata particular I/O system can support, SAS provides an I/Otesting tool that simulates these three phases. The SAS
support page describes the tool, how to use it, and how tointerpret the results.

Throughput Rates: Performance of your SAS Analytics deployment is determined by the throughput rates for each of the2 SAS file systems: /saswork and /sasdata. This document presents test results for running these two file systems on an
Infinidat enterprise storage platform. At a minimum, SAS recommends an average throughput rate of 125MB/s per physicalcore in the system.
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Test 1: Results for Single Server Running SAS
This test was conducted using a single, large bare-metal Linux system with 2 volumes configured: /sasdata and /saswork.
The server had 20 cores and 128GB of RAM. There were 4 x 16GB Fiber Channel HBA’s connecting to the InfiniBox F63xx.
The rhel_iotest.sh script was run against each file system.

SAS I/O Testing Tool Results:		

Read throughput rate:

308.12 megabytes/second per physical core		Write throughput rate:

256.91 megabytes/second per physical core

InfiniMetrics®, the Infinidat performance monitoring tool, shows the I/O performance through the entire SAS Processing cycle.

Performance Notes:
u The green line shows peak read throughput rate is over 6GB/s, with very low latency
u The red line shows peak write throughput rate is 5.3GB/s

The graph shows 3 phases of processing: Data copy, ETL, and read data. Data copy and ETL are write intensive, with data copy
using 1MB write block size. The Reads are small block sequential reads.

Test 2: Results For 3 Servers Running SAS
The second test was to show how much SAS workload can be placed on a single InfiniBox F63xx. Each server is a large
bare-metal Linux system, as described in Test 1, used to drive the SAS workload, run simultaneously on all 3 servers.
The results are as follows:

Server 1: SAS I/O Testing Tool Results		

READ THROUGHPUT RATE:

262.23 megabytes/second per physical core		

WRITE THROUGHPUT RATE:

225.86 megabytes/second per physical coreServer 2: SAS I/O Testing Tool Results		

READ THROUGHPUT RATE:

293.67 megabytes/second per physical core		

WRITE THROUGHPUT RATE:

230.52 megabytes/second per physical coreServer 3: SAS I/O Testing Tool Results:		

READ THROUGHPUT RATE:

252.74 megabytes/second per physical core		

WRITE THROUGHPUT RATE:

254.76 megabytes/second per physical core

InfiniMetrics shows the I/O performance through the entire SAS Processing cycle.

Performance Notes:
u Read throughput shows peak read throughput rate is over 16GB/su Write throughput exceeded 14.8GB/s

HighPerformanceHigh Availability
and Reliability

Multi-Petabyte
Scale

Simple and PowerfulManagement

Low TCO andHigh ROIInfiniBox Advantages for SAS
SAS requires high-performance, high-resiliency storage at scale. That system should also be easy to manage so thatadministrators can focus on the needs of the business instead of the needs of the infrastructure. InfiniBox excels at meetingthese requirements while also delivering a low total cost of ownership (TCO) with a rapid return on investment (ROI). InfiniBox
SSA, Infinidat’s 100% solid-state enterprise storage system takes performance to another level for workloads that requireconsistent, microsecond latency for every I/O.

InfiniBox is built on 5 fundamental principles that are a perfect match for SAS solutions:
1. High Performance
Groundbreaking, real-world application performance mainly contributed by architecture innovations, neural cache design,and real-time analytics. A large telecommunication company saw query times go from 40 minutes to 15 seconds after they
implemented InfiniBox, over using direct attached storage.

2. High Availability and Reliability
SLA-based outcomes, guarantees 100% availability, performance, and cyber storage recoverability.

3. Multi-Petabyte Scale
Storage densities, capacities, and efficiency that maximize floor space and storage platform consolidation up to 17PB ofeffective capacity in a 42U rack, to lower TCO and create a greener data center.

4. Simple and Powerful Management
InfiniOps enables ease-of-use and ease of automation that significantly increases the petabyte (PB) per full-time-employee(FTE) management ratio.

5. Low Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) and High Return on Investment (ROI)
A global investment management company stated using InfiniBox was 50% less expensive than their previous enterprise
array vendor. Infinidat offers a TCO of 30-50% less on a price per TB basis compared to the competition. According to the IDC
Business Value of Infinidat InfiniBox Snapshot, InfiniBox delivers an average ROI of 165% over 5 years with a 48% reduction ofoperating costs and a payback period of 11 months.** Business Value Snapshot, sponsored by Infinidat, Business Value of Infinidat InfiniBox, December 2022

Infinidat InfiniBox for SAS

InfiniBox for SAS in Action

The InfiniBox enterprise storage platform delivers
groundbreaking, real-world application performance,
100% availability guaranteed, and capacity density at
multi-petabyte scale for a multitude of mixed workloads,
synchronous and asynchronous replication, data-atrest encryption, and InfiniSafe® cyber storage recoverycapabilities, assure maximum data security and reliability.

Configuring Infinidat storage for SAS is extremely simple.
SAS requires 2 main file systems, /saswork and /sasdata.
Deploying on InfiniBox requires a single volume for each.
There is no reason to create multiple volumes for each which
complicates the configuration. When a single volume iscreated on InfiniBox, using InfiniRaid, the data objects arespread across every spindle in the frame.

With InfiniBox, SAS implementations are simpler toimplement, operate, and protect while reducing costs
and delivering the results that help companies discover,innovate, and drive their success.

InfiniBox F63xx

Multiple SAS Nodes
Scale-out configuration

Key Featuresu Groundbreaking real-world application performance mainly 		
contributed by architecture innovations, neural cache design,
and real-time analytics
u SLA-based outcomes, guarantees 100% availability, 		performance, and cyber storage recoverability
u Storage densities, capacities, and efficiency that maximize

Mount points for eachu/sasworku/sasdata

floor space and storage platform consolidation to lower TCO
and create a greener data centeru InfiniOps enables ease-of-use that significantly reduces the 		petabyte (PB) per full-time-employee (FTE) management ratiou Economy of scale that dramatically lowers TCO and increases
ROI for large scale, data intensive IT operations resulting in 		
best time-to-value

Conclusion
Analytics platforms such as SAS require rapid access to critical datasets with predictable performance regardless of theworkload. Since the data is vital to your business, it should also be highly reliable, easy to deploy, and scale with your businessgrowth. The testing with SAS publicly available test tools shows that a single InfiniBox can deliver performance advantages
whether running in a single SAS node or in a scale-out SAS model. SAS running on InfiniBox enables customers to focus on theneeds of their business instead of worrying about the cost and complexity of the storage infrastructure by providing:uFaster Ingest–increase the ingest speed and overall amount of data ingested WHILE supporting multiple user report.

uHighest Availability–capture all critical data with ultra-low latency and near-instant write acknowledgement.
100% availability guaranteed means your Splunk/InfiniBox solution is always open for business.

uSpeed/Capacity/Lowest TCO–with groundbreaking speed AND petabyte-scale capacity, InfiniBox addresses the speed
and capacity in a single solution, at the lowest total cost of ownership (TCO), providing best time-to-value.

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