Breaking the Record — Again — for IOPS Performance with Huawei OceanStor Data Storage

As the year draws to a close, Huawei OceanStor Dorado 18000 has once again proven itself to be the industry leader. This next generation intelligent all-flash storage product has set a new performance record once again, achieving over 21 million SPC-1 Input/output Operations Per Second (IOPS)™ in Storage Performance Council (SPC) Benchmark-1™ tests.

Data from the official SPC website.

What is SPC and why is it held in such high regard by mainstream storage vendors? And what are the differences between its test models?

SPC is a vendor-neutral standards body that defines, standardizes, and publicizes storage subsystem benchmarks, providing a rigorous, audited, and reliable measure of performance.

SPC created the first industry-standard performance benchmark targeted at the needs and concerns of the storage industry, and SPC membership is open to companies, academic institutions, and individuals alike.

Currently, leading storage vendors — including Huawei, Dell, Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE), Hitachi Vantara, and IBM — are all key SPC members and closely follow the latest product rankings. Indeed, with its stated goal of helping enterprises digitally transform, Huawei is committed to improving the performance and reliability of its storage range to better meet the ever-growing demands of organizations, big and small. To this end, Huawei has been proactively engaging in SPC certification since 2010.

Regarded as one of the most active test standards in the storage industry, many vendors use SPC-1 results as proof of their products' capabilities. The test uses IOPS under random Input/Output (I/O) loads to measure the performance of a storage system in Online Transaction Processing (OLTP) workloads. These workloads cover complicated requests and large data volumes, such as those generated by carrier billing systems, Hospital Information Systems (HISs), core banking systems, and Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems.

OLTP workloads require high IOPS and low latency. For enterprises with heavy OLTP workloads such as carriers, poor storage performance can lead to subscriber complaints over slow bill queries. Similarly, doctors and patients are often delayed by long queues caused by a slow system response.

The SPC-1 model is specifically designed to test storage systems in typical application scenarios. It uses random I/Os to constantly and concurrently query and update service systems — mainly database-based OLTP and email applications — to measure the IOPS performance of a storage system.

The test results help identify storage system performance in different scenarios, which serves as an objective measure on a storage system's ability to meet service needs.

Decade-long research into hardware, protocols, mediums, and algorithms has enabled Huawei to create powerful, robust all-flash storage products that consistently set performance benchmarks time and time again. These cutting-edge products help customers embrace the digital future and better cope with the challenges of rapid business growth and service centralization.

In this latest test, Huawei OceanStor Dorado 18000 registered an SPC-1 IOPS™ of 21,002,561, even when data reduction features were enabled. In addition, the capacity utilization rate reached 68.35%, a remarkable feat, standing out among the top ten tested systems.

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