Organizations invest billions of dollars annually to improve database and application responsiveness. These efforts seem never-ending and often involve moving storage-related latency a few milliseconds (ms) closer to the ideal goal of zero, with a recent paper published by analyst firm IDC and Lumen indicating that ninety percent of business leaders need a latency of 10 ms or less to ensure the success of their applications. Seventy-five percent require a latency of 5 ms or less for edge initiatives.

In a 2022 OCP conference presentation, Meta cites latency stalls of 1 s every minute and 10 s every 3 days across their SSD fleet, causing a significant impact on services. This issue is pervasive across the data center market and driving multi-billion dollar industry initiatives in search of a solution. In this whitepaper, we explore real-world solutions to key challenges, including:

• Architectural constraints
• Operational factors
• Technical considerations