LightStore: Software-defined Network-attached Key-value Drives

We propose LightStore, a key-value flash store, as a substitute for x86-based storage servers. A LightStore node has a low-power embedded-class processor, a few gigabytes of DRAM and a few terabytes of NAND flash, and can be directly connected to a network port in a datacenter. A largescale distributed storage cluster can be formed simply by adding more LightStore nodes to the network. Applications in a datacenter can take multiple "software-defined" views of LightStore stores via thin LightStore adapter layers, which translate conventional KV, YCSB, block, and file accesses to KV ones for LightStore. LightStore is estimated to be 2.0x power-efficient and 2.3x space-efficient than an x86-based all-flash array system of the same capacity. Experimental results on our LightStore prototype show that 1) the Light- Store node performance is comparable to an x86 server with a single SSD; 2) a four-node LightStore cluster exhibits up to 7.4x better ops/J than an x86 server with four SSDs.