Abstract
While some solid-state devices (SSDs) fail near the vendor-specified end-of-life (EoL), many can work reliably for much beyond the vendor-specified EoL. While discarding devices at the vendor-specified EoL is conservative, it leads to poor utilization and high cost for device uses such as data centers. This disclosure describes techniques to utilize a solid-state storage device effectively until just before the point in time when the device is determined to have unacceptably degraded. The techniques determine the true age of a device using the actual hardware characteristics (voltage distributions corresponding to each state) of the memory cells of the device. A signal is returned that indicates whether the device can be expected to continue to work reliably. The signal enables scheduling the retirement of individual SSD devices based on device-specific signals and avoids costly discarding of devices at vendor-specified EoL. Devices can be retained longer in a storage fleet thus resulting in improved utilization and lower cost of ownership.
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
Recommended Citation
n/a, "Measuring SSD Life and Optimizing Fleet Utilization", Technical Disclosure Commons, (March 10, 2023)
https://www.tdcommons.org/dpubs_series/5730