DT-RAID: A Software-Defined Tiered RAID Architecture for Heterogeneous SSDs

Abstract

The rapid proliferation of cloud and AI-driven workloads has led to increasingly complex requirements for modern storage subsystems. To meet these demands, SSD controller architectures have evolved into a fragmented landscape, offering tiers of drive types optimized for endurance, performance, or capacity. More recently, SSDs have begun to differentiate regions within the same device, enabling intra-drive heterogeneity. However, integrating such heterogeneity into the existing storage stack with minimal disruption remains challenging. In this paper, we argue that storage middleware, such as RAID, is an effective control layer to address these integration challenges. We present DT-RAID, an intra-drive heterogeneity-aware RAID architecture designed for emerging SSDs. DT-RAID monitors stripe-level I/O access patterns and makes online placement decisions without requiring application modifications. It employs a lightweight heat-tracking mechanism to dynamically place frequently accessed (hot) stripes onto the higher-performance, higher-endurance tier. Using simulations based on SNIA MSR enterprise I/O traces, we demonstrate that DT-RAID improves modeled I/O performance by up to $6.8\times$ under greater tier asymmetry and extends normalized lifespan by up to $20.9\times$ compared to uniform RAID deployments.