|
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
In January 2013 -
GridIron Systems
was acquired by
Violin.
editor's earliercomments:- April 2012 -
GridIron Systems
markets an FC SAN
fat flash
SSD ASAP / caching
appliance - which has low latency (tens of microseconds) and is intended to
be used in what the company calls "Big data" installations.
Although
conceptually similar to Dataram's
2009 vintage XcelaSAN -
GridIron's product is scaled to work with much bigger storage capacities - and
includes more dedicated silicon.
Also - unlike most other caches -
GridIron says its hot data stores and recognizes peaking data patterns over
many days - and not just short term real-time data spikes (good cache age
symmetry). That
makes it better able to respond more quickly to cyclical business demand
patterns.
Re
SSD availability
and backup? - GridIron
says the TurboCharger
"only
accelerates read I/Os and "passes through" all write I/Os and status
commands."
GridIron has strong views regarding what I call -
the SSD Heresies -
where's the best place to put your SSD etc. |
|
|
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.
In January 2013 -
Violin
acquired
GridIron Systems. |
| .. |
|
|
| .. |
|
| |
 |
| .. |
| Violin
acquires GridIron |
Editor:- January 21, 2013 - Violin today
announced
it has acquired GridIron
Systems.
Editor's comments:- in
October 2012 I
listed GridIron as 1 of the 3 main contenders to
Fusion-io in the
enterprise SSD software
stakes -with the qualifying comment...
"GridIron - probably has
the most sophisticated SSD
ASAP software in the industry. But it's a shame it has been tied (until
recently) to their hardware - an SSD HDD hybrid box."
Today's
announcement - which adds to the growing list of
notable SSD
acquisitions in the modern era of the SSD market - will enable Violin to
strengthen its already established authority in the enterprise SSD rack market. | | |
| .. |
|
|
| . |
| "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."
|
| ...from:-
GridIron's
TurboCharger - key features | | |
| .. |
 |
| .. |
| GridIron's SSDs can serve
hundreds of concurrent databases effectively |
Editor:- May 30, 2012 - GridIron Systems
describes the setup required to exceed 1 million (4kB) IOPS in a 40x MySQL
environment with mirroring - all in a single cabinet (including servers) using
its FlashCube
SSD systems (upto 80TB in this configuration), and some 10GbE and 16GbFC
fabric switches in a new
whitepaper
(pdf)
published
today.
"In large-scale MySQL environments it's not uncommon to see
hundreds or even thousands of database servers," said Dennis Martin,
President of Demartek
(which tested this configuration). "This reference architecture opens a
new, more efficient architectural approach for serving increasing numbers of
users and database queries per cabinet." | | |
| .. |
| |
