Solid State Optimized Deduplication

Albireo incorporates purpose-built configurations for flash-based storage environments to enable solid state optimized deduplication.  These configurations are designed to maximize performance, ensure reliability and manage the scalability of deduplication when used for storage optimization within solid state devices (SSDs). Several techniques are utilized for these environments including:

• Support for MurmurHash3 hashes for both Albireo SDK and Albireo VDO – allowing OEMs to leverage the inexpensive sequential read property of flash storage for increased performance
• Write minimization techniques for the Albireo Index – reducing the wear typically caused by maintaining a deduplication index on a flash device
• Synchronous write support in Albireo VDO – improving reliability by ensuring that data is written to disk before writes are acknowledged
• Write coalescence in Albireo VDO – balancing write performance by translating most random writes into sequential operations.

Support for MurmurHash3 hashes for both Albireo SDK and Albireo VDO

Albireo software is specifically optimized for use with flash-based storage solutions when deployed in solid state environments, Albireo is able to fully leverage the performance of the non-cryptographic MurmurHash3 hash function when used with these platforms.   Hash computations are combined with bit-compare operations to ensure data integrity.

Write minimization techniques for the Albireo Index

Albireo takes advantage of SSD’s low-latency reads while minimizing writes through the use of a log-structured index design.

Synchronous write support in Albireo

Albireo VDO provides a synchronous write mode command to meet the unique needs of flash-based storage solutions.  In synchronous mode, VDO will not acknowledge a write request until the data and the associated metadata are stored.  This means that Albireo is able to recover from unforeseen circumstance like an unclean shutdown with no loss of data. 

The synchronous write mode was specifically designed for flash-based storage.  Not only does VDO provide the best deduplication performance available on the market today it is also optimized to meet the unique reliability requirements for today’s solid state storage environments.

Write coalescence in Albireo VDO

Modern flash devices use a number of techniques that accelerate the performance of linear writes to solid state storage (relative to random writes).  Albireo VDO takes advantage of this property to provide more balanced write performance characteristics, accelerating the performance of random writes by using a technique known as write coalescence.  VDO uses a virtual to physical map to translate random writes into sequential operations ensuring more consistent performance characteristics.