In-Storage Computing for Hadoop MapReduce Framework: Challenges and Possibilities

Solid State Drives (SSDs) were initially developed as faster storage devices intended to replace conventional magnetic Hard Disk Drives (HDDs). However, high computational capabilities enable SSDs to be computing nodes, not just faster storage devices. Such capability is generally called ”In-Storage Computing (ISC)”. Today’s Hadoop MapReduce framework has become a de facto standard for big data processing. This paper explores In-Storage Computing challenges and opportunities for the Hadoop MapReduce framework. For this, we integrate a Hadoop MapReduce system with ISC SSD devices that implement the Hadoop Mapper inside real SSD firmware. This offloads Map tasks from the host MapReduce system to the ISC SSDs. We additionally optimize the host Hadoop system to make the best use of our proposed ISC Hadoop system. Experimental results demonstrate our ISC Hadoop MapReduce system achieves a remarkable performance gain (2.3 faster) as well as significant energy savings (11.5 lower) compared to a typical Hadoop MapReduce system. Further, the experiment suggests such ISC augmented systems can provide a very promising computing model in terms of a system scalability.