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Founded in 2003, NextIO, Inc. is the leader in next-generation
I/O virtualization solutions for today's dynamic data center in a variety of
industries including enterprise, telecommunications, digital media and financial
services. With its innovative Adaptive Connect™ platform, NextIO offers the
unique ability to virtualize I/O technology on any server, operating system,
hypervisor and storage architecture. Leveraging
PCI Express, NextIO
offers true I/O virtualization for any end-point technology. Adaptive Connect
delivers unprecedented rack-level scalability, with I/O and server resources
that can be scaled independently for 50-70% savings in capital, power, and
cooling. NextIO's any-to-any I/O connectivity boosts performance and reliability
while streamlining IT deployment, simplifying administration and reducing costs.
For more information visit www.nextio.com.
see also:-
NextIO
- editor mentions on STORAGEsearch.com and
NextIO's SSD page
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NextIO recent milestones from
SSD market
history
In June 2009 -
NextIO announced it
would demonstrate a 12 slot
PCIe flash SSD system,
designed in collaboration with
Marvell later this
month. Each slot would be capable of over 200,000 IOPs and offer 400GB
capacity.
There are nearly as many companies making
PCIe SSDs today - as
there are making 2.5"
SSDs. And it wouldn't surprise me to see the PCIe SSD oem count to become
the larger of the two.
With the growing number of
SSD controller and IP
companies in the market it's getting
easier to design
SSDs.
An electronics college graduate could probably build a
passable demonstration product as a summer project. But it's another matter
entirely - how well such a college demo unit would work in a variety of
applications and OS platforms. There's no shortcut to market experience. Users
will have to judge how much it's worth becoming beta sites for the mass of new
SSD companies flooding into the market.
NextIO is better
funded than most
students. The most recent
$15
million funding round announced earlier this month took the total to over
$55 million.
In September 2009 -
NextIO named DaWane
Wanek as vice president of world wide sales. Prior to joining NextIO, Wanek
served as a member of the executive team at
Dell, where he was a
director of the Advanced Systems Group, a division responsible for technical
sales.
In November 2009 -
NextIO entered the
mult-million IOPS rackmount
SSD market via an oem agreement which leverages multiple
225GB / 450GB PCIe SLC
SSDs made by Texas
Memory Systems.
Available immediately, the
14 slot NextIO
application acceleration appliance can be configured and reconfigured with
any mix of servers and TMS SSD cards depending on system demands. Pricing for a
basic configuration starts at $19,500, which includes implementation, training
and onsite application or database tuning assistance.
Editor's
comments:- in a little over 2 years the
PCIe SSD market first
captured the imagination of server architects worldwide and then moved off the
page into the datacenter overtaking
2.5" SSDs in
blueprints for future enterprise class servers.
This announcement is
significant. You may ask why? Haven't all the elements in this product mix been
available for some while? In some ways that's true:- rackmount PCIe
connected SSDs have been shipping since
August 2007 (Violin Memory) and very
fast PCIe SSDs cards for adding into server slots since March 2008 (Fusion-io), and
rackmount SSDs based on multiple PCIe cards since
March 2009 (Dolphin). But to my
knowledge Dolphin's solution is not available as an unbundled card.
The
new thing about This announcement is it's the 1st time that an already market proven PCIe SSD card
from one oem has also been offered in a supported (Dolphin style) rack product
from another. That considerably reduces the risk for users - and provides an
incremental upgrade path for users who aren't yet in a position to commit to
multi-terabyte proprietary rackmount SSDs. For more discussion about open vs
proprietary rackmount SSDs see -
Market Trends in
the Rackmount SSD Market
In April 2010 -
NextIO announced
availability of its
vSTOR S100
- a 3U
PCIe connected SSD
with upto 7TB modular capacity and 1.7 million IOPS (4TB model). The best way
to think about it is "Fusion-io
in a box".
In November 2010 - NextIO
announced record
breaking 4.2 million IOPS in a 4U rackmount SSD with 10TB capacity stuffed
with 16x SSD cards from Fusion-io. | |
| the 3 fastest PCIe
SSDs? |
Are you tied up in
knots trying to shortlist flash SSD accelerators ranked according to
published comparative benchmarks?
You know the sort of thing I mean -
where a magazine compares 10 SSDs or a blogger compares 2 SSDs against each
other. It would be nice to have a shortlist so that you don't have to waste too
much of your own valuable time testing unsuitable candidates wouldn't it?
StorageSearch's long running
fastest SSDs directory
typically indicates 1 main product in each form factor category but those
examples may not be compatible with your own ecosystem.
If so a
new article -
the 3 fastest PCIe
SSDs list (or is it really lists?) may help you cut that Gordian
knot. Hmm... you may be thinking that StorageSearch's editor never gives easy
answers to SSD questions if more complicated ones are available.
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But in this case you'd be
wrong. (I didn't say you'd like the answers, though.) ...read the article | | | |
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SSD Bookmarks series
suggestions
by - Tim Miller, CEO Dolphin Interconnect Solutions
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Here's an article written by or
about Dolphin
Integrating
Solid State Storage in a PCI Express Clustering Interconnect (pdf)
Tim
Miller says he chose this article because "Using PCIe SSDs as Direct
Attached Storage (DAS) is a hot topic these days. This paper describes
extending the benefits "outside the box" to e-PCIe SSD (external) by
detailing a number of new e-PCIe SSD usage models using Dolphin's
StorExpress.
This includes simple DAS, with virtualization and HA support for up to 2TB for
slot limited rack or blade servers to the ability for integration in PCIe
cluster environments for multi-server connectivity and eventually shared storage
creating 'networked' DAS - the flexibility of SAN, simplicity of DAS and the
performance of SSD."
Other SSD article suggestions...
Design
Tradeoffs for SSD Performance - written by Nitin Agrawal (University of
Wisconsin) and Vijayan Prabhakaran, Ted Wobber, John D. Davis, Mark Manasse and
Rina Panigrahy at Microsoft
Research presented at the annual
USENIX conference.
Tim
Miller says "This paper is a useful primer on technical trade-offs for SSD
performance appropriate for non-engineers who want to have a foundation of
knowledge."
Other SSD bookmark suggestions...
"The
're-debate' of SAN vs. DAS takes on a new dimension with PCIe SSD and now e-PCIe
SSD - I thought a couple recent blogs and articles were interesting"
DAS:
the biggest surprise at NAB '09 - by Robin Harris (StorageMojo)
DAS
VS. SAN - by George Crump, and published on
InformationWeek
Editor:-
thanks Tim for sharing your SSD links.
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| this way to the Petabyte
SSD |
In 2016 there will be
just 3 types of
SSD in the datacenter.
One
of them doesn't exist yet - the bulk storage SSD.
It will replace the
last remaining strongholds of
hard drives in the
datacenter due to its unique combination of characteristics, low running costs
and operational advantages. |
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... |
The new model of the
datacenter - how we get from here to there - and the technical problems which
will need to be solved - are just some of the ideas explored in this
visionary article. | | | |
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