SNIA releases solid state storage test spec for public review
Last round of public input before final test specification is developed
(7/13/2010)
The Storage Networking Industry Association has released the newest version of performance testing standards for solid state storage devices for enterprise computing, as well as for users. This is the last draft of the Solid State Storage Performance Test Specification released for public review before the first official spec is published.
In a news release, SNIA said that for wide market adoption of solid-state storage equipment to happen, there needs to be a common process for testing products by various manufacturers, who so far have been using disparate testing methods to arrive at their performance specs.
“This makes it difficult for purchasers of SSS to compare products from different companies,” SNIA’s Eden Kim said in a statement. “This announcement is a major step forward in enabling purchasers of solid state storage devices to compare the performance of solid state storage products from different manufacturers on an 'apples-to-apples' comparison.”
SNIA’s specification prescribes test preparation methodologies, defines a test environment and defines “steady state” of an SSS solution. According to SNIA, a typical “fresh-out-of-the-box” SSS device shows elevated performance levels for a brief period after it is first exposed to a workload before settling into a lower-performance “steady state.” The associations proposes that SSS solutions need to be tested while in the steady state for more accurate evaluation.
The specification is agnostic to test hardware and software. The test and methodologies only specify general requirements of the platform to prevent test hardware and software bottlenecks or other unintended influences on test measurements.
There is a description of a Reference Test Platform, which includes hardware, software and tools the association’s Technical Work Group used in most of the research and validation of the specification.
The new public-review draft of the SSS PTS is downloadable from SNIA’s Web site for the next 60 days, after which it will be taken down. Comments gathered during this period will be considered in creation of the published version 1.0 of the ratified specification.
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