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EMC Corporation (NYSE: EMC) is the world’s leading
developer and provider of information infrastructure technology and solutions
that enable organizations of all sizes to transform the way they compete and
create value from their information. Information about EMC’s products and
services can be found at www.EMC.com.
see also:-
EMC
- editor mentions in STORAGEsearch.com |
Editor's comments:- December 2009
Among other things -
EMC markets
rackmount SSDs
which leverage SSDs from
STEC - mostly in arrays
which were originally designed for hard disk interfaces and performance.
These
under-engineered products do not - in my view - represent the state of the
art in SSD performance or value for money - but may be a convenient detour on
the route for some existing EMC customers while they decide their long term SSD
strategies.
In the past 10 quarters - EMC has
never appeared in the
the Top 10 SSD
Companies - which tracks reader search volume on SSD vendors.
Its highest ranking was #11 in 2008 Q1 when
(after a 20
year absence)
EMC re-entered the
SSD market with the
launch of
its Symmetrix DMX-4 networked storage systems populated with
flash SSDs from
STEC.
Recent
milestones and comments re EMC - from
SSD Market
History. |
| Editor's comments - from
January 2008 -
related to EMC's SSD launch. |
EMC was an SSD pioneer way back in
1987.
EMC's early SSDs were 20x faster than the then available hard disks. But
market forces and losses led to EMC exiting the "memory enhancement"
business soon after.
Will this relaunch be any more successful?
I
think so. The server market has always been hungry for more performance.
Back
in 1987 - when EMC's original SSD came to market - the performance issue was
clouded by a spate of new RISC processor announcements (such as
SPARC, MIPS, and PA) -
which gave 3x CPU speedups compared to CISC offerings from Intel, Motorola and
DEC's VAX while using conventional hard disk storage.
I predict within
a few years there will be hundreds of
rackmount SSD array
vendors joining the EMC bandwaggon.
This part of the
SSD revolution
is not about replacing hard disks. It
never was.
It's about getting more application performance from less servers by using
storage accelerators. | | |
| In December 2009 -
EMC published a
report on its new
fully
automated storage tiering concept which the company says will simplify user
operations needed to optimize storage allocation between
hard drives and
SSDs within the company's
arrays. EMC says some of this functionality is
now
available on some models. (See editor's comments in sidebar article on the
right.) |
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| EMC Casts
SSD Divining Rod into Hard Disk Arrays |
Editor:- December 8, 2009 -
EMC today published
a report on its new
fully
automated storage tiering concept which the company says will simplify user
operations needed to optimize storage allocation between
hard drives and
SSDs within the company's
arrays.
The company says some of this functionality is
now
available on some models.
Editor's comments:- although
better than nothing - adding a software manager retrospectively to storage
arrays which were never designed for SSDs in the 1st place can never deliver as
much performance as a true native
ASAP
SSD appliance (where some of the support is built into the hardware) - and
nowhere near as much performance as the
fastest SSDs (EMC
has never been in this list) when optimized by human SSD hot shots.
In
order to get the full benefits of the SSD acceleration paradigm EMC will need to
dump its legacy storage array designs and start offering boxes which have been
designed from the outset to support large amounts of
PCIe SSD capacity.
Without that - its systems will remain moderate performers at immoderate
prices.
To put it another way - bolting SSD tiering onto controllers
designed for hard drives is like trying to do air traffic control by having a
traffic cop standing on the ground and waving his stick. |
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You can make the stick a
brighter color and give the pilot stronger glasses - but it's not going to give
you the traffic movements you get from integrated avionics. | | |
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