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IBM is the world's largest information technology services and
consulting provider. Some 190,000 professionals in more than 160 countries help
clients integrate information technology with business value -- from the
business transformation and industry expertise of IBM Business Consulting
Services to hosting, infrastructure, technology design and training services.
IBM services business delivers integrated, flexible and resilient processes
across companies and through business partners, enabling clients to save money
and transform their businesses to be more competitive. For more information,
visit www.ibm.com/services.
See also:-
IBM
- editor mentions on STORAGEsearch.com,
IBM
article comparing SAS SSDs with PCIe SSDs
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- Editor's comments:- re IBM and SSDs
It took
many years for
IBM's
SSD strategy to materialize into a recognizable shape.
Like other
server companies - initially it was not in IBM's interests to
educate customers
about SSDs because they feared it would reduce server sales. But as I predicted
in my 2003 SSD market
adoption article - as soon as user knowledge about SSDs reached a critical
mass and other server makers started to adopt them - server makers like IBM
potentially realized they would lose server sales if they didn't support them.
Before their born-again enthusiasm for SSDs - IBM (in 2006) had publicly
ridiculed products from SSD makers such as Texas Memory Systems - and / or
claimed that other SSD products in the market weren't good enough to use yet.
(A similar ploy to SSD latecomer
Seagate.)
Like
many other server companies IBM has gone for the "safe" option of
remarketing, reselling or
rebadging proven
SSD products from companies like
Fusion-io,
STEC,
SanDisk and others.
Whether
any of IBM's internal semiconductor
research related to
non
volative memory technologies will ever be productized remains to be seen. My
guess is that most of the action in this space from IBM will be in licensing or
litigation related to patents - rather than home grown fully fledged SSD
products. |
| Recent IBM SSD milestones
from
SSD Market
History. |
July 2007 -
SanDisk announced that
its SATA 5000 2.5-inch SSD will be offered as an option in IBM's new
BladeCenter HS21 XM.
April 2008 -
IBM Previews Racetrack Solid State Storage
August 2008 -
Fusion-io's SSDs were the secret ingredient in an
IBM
"million IOPS" story.
September 2008
- IBM announced a technology collaboration with
Fusion-io
In
February 2009 - IBM published a well written article -
SSDs
for Enterprise Storage (pdf) which introduces the need for SSD acceleration
and explains IBM's strategy in this market.
In May 2009 -
STEC confirmed that its
SSDs are oemed in several popular
IBM servers and storage
systems.
In December 2009 - Fusion-io
announced
that its ioMemory PCIe
SSD technology has been adapted by IBM who will remarket these
solutions (initially with upto 320GB capacity) as its
High
IOPS SSD PCIe Adapters for use in System x servers. | |
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the Problem with
Write IOPS
the "play it again Sam" syndrome |
Editor:- Flash SSD "random
write IOPS" are now similar to "read IOPS" in many of the
fastest SSDs.
So
why are they such a poor predictor of application performance?
And
why are users still buying
RAM SSDs which cost
9x more than SLC? - even when the IOPS specs look similar. |
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This article tells you
why the specs got faster - but the applications didn't. And why competing SSDs
with apparently identical benchmark results can perform completely
differently. ...read
the article | | | | |
