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GridIron Systems is a Big Data Acceleration company based in
Sunnyvale, California. Formed in 2008 by a team of networking, storage and SAN
innovators, it has focused on
bringing the benefits of new technologies like solid state disk to improve data
center performance and costs with the LEAST amount of operational disruption.
GridIron has 24 patents pending in areas related to big data storage,
access-behavior analysis and management. GridIron offers the most comprehensive
solutions to speed up multi-terabyte databases including clustered and
virtualized environments at a fraction of the cost of alternatives. Additional
information is available at www.gridironsystems.com. Follow GridIron on Twitter:
@gridironsystems.
see also:- GridIron's
blog
GridIron
- editor mentions on StorageSearch.com
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In January 2011 - I commented on GridIron's (then) newly
unveiled
TurboCharger
- which sits between a server and traditional storage network and uses its
intelligence to speed up iSCSI
or FC SAN I/O upto 1,000x.
At that time - the company stated categorically their product is not
an
SSD. But it sounded to me
functionally identical to an
SSD ASAP (caching
appliance) - and that's the market it will compete with - regardless of the
internal ratio of internal controller hardware to memory or absence of non
volatile memory or internal flash SSD storage.
In April 2011 -
Readers of a
blog
by Storage Switzerland - learned that - "GridIron's TurboCharger
appliance models provide 2.5TB or 6.5TB of SSD capacity, 1.6GB/s of bandwidth
and 100,000 IOPS through 2 front-end and 2 back-end 8Gb FC ports. Appliances can
scale linearly, accelerating up to 64TB of primary storage. GridIron uses custom
FPGAs to drive the performance..."
In September 2011 -
GridIron Systems
announced
general availability of its
TurboCharger
- an FC SAN
fat flash
SSD ASAP / auto-tiering
cache - which has low latency (tens of microseconds) and is intended to be
used in what the company calls "Big data" installations.
In
April 2012 - GridIron
Systems
announced
that it is approaching
petabyte scale
FC SAN SSD capability
with its OneAppliance auto-tiering
product family which will be shipping next month. The company's
RackPack
includes 250TB of Flash. |
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| How big was the
thinking in this SSD's design? |
Does size really does matter in SSD
design?
By that I mean how big was the mental map? - not how many
inches wide is the SSD.
The novel and the short story both have their
place in literature and the pages look exactly the same. But you know from
experience which works best in different situations and why.
When
it comes to SSDs - Big versus Small SSD architecture - is something which was
in the designer's mind. Even if they didn't think about it that way at the time.
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For designers, integrators,
end users and investors alike - understanding what follows from these simple
choices predicts a lot of important consequences. ...read the article | | | |
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| "Most cache
approaches are based on data behavior for just the data being accessed and then
only during the current access. The TurboCharger uses many days of history
of the entire data set to decide how to best manage each data access. ...to
most improve the performance of the application."
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| ...from:-
GridIron's
TurboCharger - key features | | |
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| still
waiting to learn more about GridIron's SSDs? |
Editor:- April 24, 2012 - GridIron Systems
yesterday
announced
that it is approaching
petabyte scale
FC SAN SSD capability
with its OneAppliance auto-tiering
product family which will be shipping next month.
Building blocks
include:-
- FlashCube (1 million IOPS, 10GB/s R/W, upto 100TB)
- iNode (40 core TB RAM with 100TB flash)
- RackPack (40 server system with 4 million IOPS, 40GB/s bandwidth and 250TB
of Flash
Editor's comments:- I took the
unusual
step (for me) of registering with GridIron's website so I could read the
product details. I had asked the company last December to remove this
anti-informational inquiry process - but the barrier is still in place. Today
it took far too many many minutes for their web site to come back with a
message saying that I could now be allowed to read their datasheets. But by
then I had used up my time budget.
GridIron's
blogs suggest that because their
systems are so fast - you'll get better results using their racks for
big data analytics instead of other SSDs - and in particular
PCIe SSDs like those
from Fusion-io,
OCZ and
LSI.
Are you
going to wait 5 minutes or more on their web site to get information which you
should be able to see immediately so you can decide how credible is their claim
that they can save you time and money with their proprietary solution?
Someone
should tell their VCs that this company is still in stealth mode when it comes
to web based communications.
And
SSD racks versus PCIe
SSDs is a flawed analysis anyway. Most enterprises will need and use
both.
...Later:-
April 28, 2012 - GridIron's CTO, Som Sikdar responded to my
criticism above and said the company
is
sorry and will review and improve the information accessibility on its
website.
And a few days later - the log-in wall was removed. |
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