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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.
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See also:-
EMC
- editor mentions in StorageSearch.com and
EMC's
SSD page | |
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Who's who in SSD? - by
Zsolt Kerekes,
editor - May 2012
EMC is 1 of more than 100 companies in the
rackmount SSD market.
It also engages in these market segments:-
FC SAN SSDs,
iSCSI SSDs,
SSD software,
HA SSDs and
PCIe SSDs.
Many
of the leading SSD companies I talk to - which compete with EMC - are happy that
for many years EMC was a non-participant, and then a follower and integrator
of externally sourced SSD hardware rather than a leader in SSD architecture.
Uncompetitive SSD solutions from EMC were good for them.
Nevertheless - that doesn't stop many of these self same companies having wished
at one time or another than EMC would become a volume customer of their products
- or maybe even
acquire them. (EMC
acquired XtremIO - in
May 2012).
As the
SSD market has grown
bigger - EMC has been under increasing pressure to do something more
significant in the SSD market. As predicted EMC has been slowly solving its
SSD weaknesses and gaps using a combination of
oem deals,
licensing and acquisition - overlayed by promises of significant
SSD software in the
future. There was no big-bang quick-fix available that would work any better.
EMC
has oemed SSDs from many leading SSD makers including:-
STEC,
Samsung ,
HGST,
LSI and
Micron.
EMC formed a
flash business unit in May 2011 - but it wasn't until February 2012 that
the company launched its first PCIe SSD based products (Project Lightning)
which uses PCIe SSDs sourced from
LSI.
For more
info about EMC take a look at the links above and
EMC
- editor mentions in StorageSearch.com.
I currently talk to more
than 300 makers of SSDs and another 100 or so companies which are
closely enmeshed around the SSD ecosphere - which are all profiled here on
the mouse site.
I learn about new SSD companies every day, including
many in stealth mode. If you're interested in the growing
big picture of
the SSD market canvass - StorageSearch will help you along the way. Many
SSD company CEOs read our site too - and say they value our thought leading SSD
content - even when we say something that's not always comfortable to hear. I
hope you'll find it it useful too. |
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In
1987
EMC
introduced SSD storage for the mini-computer market, which was the
hottest part of the server market at that time. EMC's 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.
... ...21 years later:- EMC
re-entered
the SSD market in January 2008
- with rackmount arrays populated by
flash SSDs from
STEC.
In October 2010
- Samsung said it is
shipping 200GB 3.5"
SATA SLC SSDs to EMC.
Sequential R/W speeds are 260MB/s and 245MB/s respectively. R/W
IOPS are
47,000 and 29,000. The new Samsung SSDs have an 'end-to-end
data integrity'
function and encryption.
InJanuary
2011 - EMC revealed it
had shipped 10 petabytes of SSD storage in 2010. To put that into context:-
it's equivalent to 10% of the enterprise SSD capacity shipped in the
same period by
SandForce
Driven partners and 2/3 of the enterprise SSD capacity shipped in the same
period by Fusion-io.
Most of EMC's flash in that period was SLC - whereas most of the flash shipped
by the other named vendors (and their channel partners) was lower cost MLC.
There are differences - see
are MLC SSDs Ever
Safe in Enterprise Apps? - for more about that.
In May 2011
- EMC
announced
it has created a flash business unit and will enter the
PCIe SSD market later
this year. The company indicated that its run rate of shipping flash storage
array capacity in 2011 is approximately 3x the level it had achieved in
2010.
In February 2012 -
EMC
launched
its new PCIe SSD based product line - VFCache - which as widely reported last
month - leverages hardware designed by
LSI and incorporates
SandForce controllers.
In May 2012 -
EMC
announced
it has acquired XtremIO
for $430
million |
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| "In 1987 EMC
introduced SSD storage for the mini-computer market, which was the hottest
part of the server market at that time. EMC's SSDs were 20x faster than
the then available hard disks." |
| ...from:-
Charting the
Rise of the SSD Market | | |
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| EMC acquires XtremIO |
Editor:- May 10, 2012 - EMC today
announced
it has acquired XtremIO
for $430
million.
Editor's comments:- XtremIO was a vendor of
rackmount SSDs
which included dedupe
and management of the storage drives in the array using proprietary array
technology which the company said was much more efficient than
RAID - while also
supporting high performance and fast
snapshots. | | |
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| EMC finally
does PCIe SSD launch |
Editor:- February 6, 2012 - EMC today
launched
its new PCIe SSD based product line - which as widely reported last month -
leverages hardware designed by LSI.
As
you'd expect - EMC say they plan to do a lot of things to support this with
their wrap around software protection (high availability, data integrity,
reliability, and disaster recovery) and
auto tiering / SSD ASAP.
And in the future they're going to do things even faster. Nothing to get
excited about then - unless you are a supplier to EMC.
EMC would like
to suggest that it was the first company to offer flash SSDs in an enterprise
storage array Their press release said - "VFCache is the latest in a line
of enterprise flash innovation firsts, beginning in 2008 when EMC was the first
to integrate flash drives into an enterprise storage array."
That's
an idiosyncratic reinterpretation of
SSD history.
In the interests of accuracy I would rewrite that to say - "EMC was
the 1st company to ship lonely flash drives in an EMC branded enterprise
storage array (which consisted mostly of hard drives)."
losers
from this?
I guess you can count
STEC as a loser -
because having been EMC's original flash SSD supplier (in other form factors)
they may have had some hopes that their late-to-market new PCIe SSD might get
its tires kicked.
I'm only saying this - because otherwise I'll get a
load of emails asking what I think - but in my view it would be a mistake to
count Fusion-io as a
loser in this.
FIO is the company which did most to establish PCIe
SSDs as a recognized and disruptive force in the enterprise market - and a year
ago upset EMC by disclosing it had shipped significantly more of its fast
ioDrive flash SSD capacity into the enterprise than EMC had done with its slower
STEC kind - despite EMC having had the prior advantage of a legacy tied
customer base.
I heard recently from someone who is no longer with the
company - that as you might expect for a fledgling company developing oem
opportunities - many years ago Fusion-io offered its PCIe SSDs as an oem
platform to EMC. Apparently EMC evaluated the ioDrive and poked around the
issue for months - but EMC was - at that time - "clueless" about the
potential of the SSD market couldn't understand what to do with it. | | |
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