Texas Memory Systems's
founder writes about 20 years of DoD SSDs
Editor:- September 20,
2010 - Holly Frost founder of Texas Memory Systems
has written a paper (pdf)
which describes how variants of the company's newer SSDs like the
RamSan-630 have been used
recently by the US DoD and Intelligence Community.
In
another article he
describes some features of their 1st DoD SSD in 1988. The company launched its
1st commercial enterprise SSDs in 2001 - but has continued evolving its
defense based array processing capabilities.
Violin ships 40TB 3U "value" SSDs
Editor:-
September 20, 2010 -
Violin Memory today
announced
availability of the
Violin
3140 - a 3U MLC SSD with 40TB capacity
priced at under $16
per GB and $3 per
IOPS.
Editor's
comments:- Violin
says its
non blocking write architecture "guarantees spike-free latency under load
by making sure there aren't any reads blocked by erases which can be 10ms or
more in MLC Flash."
This architecture 1st appeared in the SLC SSD
it launched in November
2008. From my understanding of how this works (and it was explained to me at
the time) it can deliver data for a read operation immediately following a
write to the same addressable block of flash. But you may still hit a
bottleneck depending how many successive write / reads are done. The latency
will be much less than for most flash SSDs - but still considerably more than
for RAM SSDs.
Violin calls its new product a "capacity flash
array" - although this is not the same market as the "bulk storage SSDs"
described earlier by StorageSearch.com. The best way to think about Violin's
latest offering is "value SSDs". That is - products which don't have
the fastest performance - or ultimate
data integrity -
but which nevertheless provide better performance than
HDD arrays at a cost well
below faster SSDs.
The company's proprietary architecture ensures that
less flash chips are needed to build any given capacity than if you built an
SSD using a RAID array of 2.5"
SSDs (for example). But whether this is reflected in the price you'll have
to decide for yourself. See also:-
Market Trends in
the Rackmount SSD Market.
STEC samples 3.5" RAM SSD
Editor:- September 20,
2010 - STEC
today
announced
it is sampling a new 3.5"
dual port SAS
compatible RAM SSD - the
ZeusRAM SSD - with
8GB capacity and under 23 microseconds average latency and internal flash
backup.
Editor's comments:-
RAM SSDs don't have the
"play it
again Sam... as time goes by" syndrome inherent in
flash SSDs -
because they have genuinely low repeat write latency and can be 10x to 20x
faster. In some applications that's a difference
worth paying for.
The
1st 3.5" RAM SSD featured on these pages - was the
MegaRam-35 (in
June 2002) which was a parallel
SCSI SSD from Imperial
Technology. A year later in 2003 -
Curtis marketed a 3.5"
fibre-channel RAM SSD - the
HyperXCLR - which
for many years held the speed records in that form factor. The Curtis unit is
still available as too is a similar product from
Density Dynamics.
the SSD Bookmarks - WhipTail Tech
Editor:-
September 16, 2010 - StorageSearch.com
today published an update to the
SSD Bookmarks series
(which includes recommended reading from SSD industry thought leaders) -
with
new links for you
to see suggested by James Candelaria,
CTO - WhipTail
Technologies ...read the articles
SSD Data Recovery - update
Editor:- September 15,
2010 - regular readers of
StorageSearch.com know that
I'm skeptical about the claims which most data recovery companies put on their
web sites about their abilities to
recover data from
failed SSDs.
David Foster,
General Manager of Memofix
emailed me to say - "I was reading what you were saying about SSD drives
and data recovery. I agree 100% with your view that most recovery companies
cannot deal with most SSD hardware issues. But please remember a large portion
of the cases any recovery company sees are the result of file system damaged or
corruption .. and these cases are easily handled by any half descent DR
company.
"Memofix has only ever seen 3 SSD drives for data
recovery and 2 cases were file system damage including a simple deletion case.
In the other case we were able to replace a non-memory component and make the
device accessible again.
"Additionally we do dozens of
USB flash drives with
anywhere from 1-4 actual memory chips onboard, so we do intimately understand
the intricies of translation tables and putting all the pieces back together."
Editor:- it's good to hear from people who know what they're doing in
this new area of SSD data recovery. David Foster also writes a
blog in which he
discusses storage
reliability and recovery in a more informative way than many others I've
seen - based on his long experience in the industry.
For example - did
you know that 2.5"
drives are more recoverable than 3.5" drives? - I didn't - and would
have expected it to be the other way round. |
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other
storage news on this
page
TMS's founder writes about 20 years of DoD SSDs
Violin
ships 40TB 3U "value" SSDs
STEC samples 3.5" RAM SSD
another
$25 million funding - for SandForce
the SSD Bookmarks - WhipTail
Tech
SSD Data Recovery - update | |
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| SSDs - the big picture |
| Editor:-
StorageSearch.com was the
world's 1st publication to provide continuous editorial coverage and analysis
of SSDs (in 1998) and in the 12 years which have followed we've led the market
through many interesting and confusing times. |
 |
If you often find yourself
explaining to your VC, lawyer or non technical BBQ guests why you spend so
much time immersed in SSD web pages - and need a single, simple, non very
technical reference to suggest - this may be the link they need. | | | | |
