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OCZ logoOCZ

OCZ is an enthusiast SSD brand offered by Toshiba for the consumer market.


See also:- OCZ - mentions on StorageSearch.com , OCZ SSDs overview


Editor:- July 5, 2016 - OCZ was ranked #16 in the Q2 2016 edition of the Top SSD Companies List which is researched and published by StorageSearch.com.

OCZ's highest rank in this series was #3 in Q2 2015

Also in Q2 2016 - Toshiba (which has owned OCZ for over 2 years) changed the way it was using the OCZ brand. OCZ is now designated as a consumer brand within the Toshiba SSD portfolio.

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earlier comments about OCZ

In January 2014 - the assets of OCZ - which had been in bankruptcy - were acquired and the new OCZ Storage Solutions became a Toshiba group company.

In the years leading up to that acquisition OCZ's rank in the Top SSD Companies List was always higher than that of Toshiba - even though OCZ entered the SSD market 2 years later than the company which ended up acquiring it.

This disparity in rank (a lower ranked SSD company buying a higher ranked one) has often been the relative picture in SSD acquisitions. The guys with more money buy the guys with desirable SSD IP.


Who's who in SSD? - OCZ Storage Solutions

by by Zsolt Kerekes, editor StorageSearch.com

Editor:- January 22, 2014 - The new OCZ - starts out in a strong competitive position - as it not only inherits a well established enterprise SSD business (which I discussed in an article in November 2013) - but it sheds many of the disadvantages which limited the revenue scalability of the old OCZ entity in the year leading up to its bankruptcy.

Immediate advantages which the new OCZ will benefit from include:-
  • less constrained future access to flash memory for its SSDs

    The old OCZ suffered from allocation and cost issues related to its perceived riskiness as a flash customer.
  • strengthening of the brand.

    OCZ's brand was already very strong in the SSD market. But for some customers in enterprise and embedded markets - there would always be an element of doubt about the long term roadmaps due to instabilities in the SSD market. Now as part of the long established Toshiba group of companies - many users will be happy to temporarily set such concerns aside - and focus more on the individual merits of particular products and their technical suitability .
  • access to more flash and SSD IP.

    While every acquisition in the SSD market is different - early indications are that OCZ could become a launch pad for integrating and expanding some of Toshiba's legacy SSD assets into bigger markets - especially in the enterprise segments.

editor's introductory comments:- October 2013

OCZ entered the SSD market in March 2008 and has been in StorageSearch's top SSD companies lists ever since.

In Q3 2013 OCZ was ranked #13.

OCZ's highest ever rank was #4 first achieved in Q2 2012 and then maintained upto Q4 2012.

In the 1st half of 2012 OCZ's peak quarterly SSD revenue exceeded $100 million / quarter. And it looked like the company's fast rate of growth was unstoppable. But soon after the company revealed that its revenue recording systems had been flawed and that most of the company's sales of consumer SSDs were unprofitable. That led to a major re-organization in the company lasting over a year - during which time the company slimmed down its product lines to reduce its reliance on the consumer market - and shift more focus onto its enterprise SSDs.

In recent quarters enterprise SSDs have accounted for between 40% and 50% approx of the company's revenue.

OCZ's product lines still include leading and notable SSD products in these segments:- PCIe SSDs, SAS SSDs, 2.5" SSDs, SATA SSDs, consumer SSDs and SSD controllers.

"At some stage I think the company (OCZ) is going to have to decide what markets it's really in - and exit the least profitable segments" - editor's comments July 6, 2011 - the Top 20 SSD OEMs - in 2011 Q2

Editor:- November 5, 2012 - re OCZ - the new / short version.

Even before the recent events which have forced the need for a change of CEO, reorganization and sharper business focus within OCZ - it's been clear for the past year that OCZ has become a significant factor in the enterprise SSD component market - especially in the customer segment which I called - dark matter (hard to reach but potentially big SSD customers) - and small to medium size oems - because OCZ's sales culture made the company's products easier to acquire and design into new apps (for this type of customer) than alternative enterprise SSDs from Micron, STEC, Virident etc.

My reading and interpretation of what's going on now is that OCZ's enterprise PCIe SSDs line and related software will most likely remain at the heart of the product line because there's a market gap for a company like OCZ which is easier to do business with if you're a smaller or medium size oem customer.


Who's who in SSD?

by Zsolt Kerekes, editor - November 25, 2011

(deep breath and begin)...

OCZ are 1 of many companies in the notebook SSD market, 1 of more than 100 companies in the 2.5" SSD market, 1 of more than 40 companies in the PCIe SSD market, 1 of 30 companies in the SSD controller and IP market... 1 of (soon to be hundreds) of companies in the auto-tiering SSD market, an innovator in the hybrid SSD market - (but I haven't finished yet - good job I took in that deep breath at the start) - OCZ also make SSDs with SAS, SATA and USB interfaces... And they are also in the top 20 SSD companies and fastest SSDs lists too. (Phew!)

I could have made this list longer.

Or I could have made it shorter by writing about the complementary market sets.

For example - I could have said - "OCZ doesn't sell rackmount SSDs, RAM SSDs FC SAN SSDs or hard military SSDs."

But then I would have had to add an important qualifier at the end. - "Yet".

And then maybe added - "As far as I know."

OCZ are involved in so many segments of the SSD market it's hard to keep up - even though the company and its products are very accessible.

Keeping up with OCZ is like tracking about 20 other SSD companies - if I blink - I find they're in another market.

Can all these SSD market experiments succeed?

Probably not.

No single company can be best at everything. But OCZ do make it easy to buy their products and they have wide visibility into which SSD segments are hot for business and which are not. I'd guess they understand the comparative attractions of these SSD market segments better than most SSD analysts - because OCZ is right in there in the shopping cart - so they don't have to wait to read what's been selling in the past quarter in market research reports published by the usual terabyte talliers.

It looks to me that OCZ are spinning the handles in many parallel SSD market slot machines. If there are going to be any winners - they'll be among the first to know. And if a segment looks like a loser - OCZ knows where it can get a better game.

To conclude - I'll use the summary I wrote recently in my Q3 2011 top SSD companies roundup.

"If there is a science to the art of selling and pragmatically marketing SSDs - then OCZ is the master of it..."

I currently talk to more than 300 makers of SSDs and another 100 or so companies which are closely enmeshed around the SSD ecosphere - which are all profiled here on the mouse site.

I learn about new SSD companies every day, including many in stealth mode. If you're interested in the growing big picture of the SSD market canvass - StorageSearch will help you along the way. Many SSD company CEOs read our site too - and say they value our thought leading SSD content - even when we say something that's not always comfortable to hear. I hope you'll find it it useful too.

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"In March 2008 - OCZ entered the SSD market with the launch of its first 2.5" flash SSD - taking the number of SSD oems listed on StorageSearch.com at that time to 70."
...from:- Charting the Rise of the SSD Market

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OCZ - mentions in SSD market history

In March 2009 - OCZ unveiled a PCIe SSD at CeBIT. The Z Drive uses MLC flash and has capacity of 1TB. But soon after:- OCZ disclosed that the sustained write speed is a mere 200MB/s - which is 4x slower than single slot PCIe SSDs from Fusion-io and Texas Memory Systems.

In April 2009 - OCZ unveiled new 2.5" SATA flash SSDs for MacBooks. OCZ also published a list of MacBooks which the company says are compatible.

Also in April 2009 - OCZ unveiled its 1st miniPCI-Express compatible SSDs. Aimed at notebooks OCZ miniPCI-E options include:- 16GB or 32GB capacity, and 2 interface options. SATA models - have R/W speeds 110MB/s and 51MB/s respectively . PATA models - have R/W speeds 45MB/s and 35MB/s respectively.

In May 2009 - OCZ launched its fastest 2.5" consumer SATA SSDs - the Summit Series - with 200MB/s sustained write and 250GB capacity.

Although not the fastest SSDs in the industry, they are more than 2x as fast as OCZ's Core series launched less than a year before.

In July 2009 - OCZ was ranked #12 - just outside the Top 10 SSD companies - Q2 2009 - in the 9th quaterly edition of this popular feature based on search volume.

Also in July 2009 - OCZ announced faster versions of its 2.5" SATA flash SSDs. By increasing the internal cache speed by 8% the Vertex Turbo now delivers read and write speeds clocking in at up to 270MB/s read and 210MB/s write. These are fast for consumer SSDs - but see the fastest SSDs list for much faster devices.

In November 2009 - OCZ announced it will launch a new SAS SSD family based on SSD SoCs from SandForce which will probably be shown at CES in January 2010.

Also in November 2009 -Symwave announced that its USB 3.0 controller has been designed into a new flash SSD by OCZ - which will be shown at CES in January 2010.

In March 2010 - OCZ announced it's shipping a 32GB 2.5" MLC SSD for under $100. R/W speeds are unremarkable - at a mere 125MB/s and 70MB/s respectively - but the main point of this launch - according to OCZ's CEO, Ryan Petersen - was to publicize the price point and show what the company is doing "to make SSDs more affordable to end-users."

Editor's comments:- You get exactly what you pay for in SSD pricing. The big problem is knowing what you want. OCZ's new Onyx is a very low capacity, slowish notebook SSD which is unsuitable for server apps. But it does appear to be a good price today according to this comparison. (It may not look so good later.)

Also in March 2010 - disclosed it has closed $15 million in funding to support its growing SSD business.

In April 2010 - OCZ launched the Z-Drive R2 - a bootable PCIe MLC SSD with upto 2TB capacity and upto 950MB/s sustained write throughput. R/W IOPS are 29,000 and 7,200 respectively - an order of magnitude slower than the fastest PCIe SSDs today - but nevertheless useful for many applications - unlike the original Z-Drive (March 2009) which so slow that it couldn't be regarded as a serious contender.

In June 2010 - OCZ unveiled the RevoDrive a bootable PCIe SSD with R/W speeds up to 540MB/s and 530MB/s respectively and 75,000 IOPS.

In July 2010 - the architectural weak points of OCZ's early PCIe SSDs were criticised in an interview with Fusion-io's CEO published on StorageSearch.com.

In August 2010 - OCZ announced plans to wind down its commodity DRAM business and focus more resources on SSDs

In October 2010 - OCZ achieved its best ever listing in the quarterly top 10 SSD oems list based on SSD search volume in Q3 2010.

Also - in the same month - OCZ launched a 2nd generation version of its RevoDrive - a bootable legacy architecture PCIe SSD with R/W speeds up to 740MB/s and and 120,000 IOPS which uses 4x SandForce SF 1200 controllers.

In November 2010 - StorageSearch.com learned from reliable sources that OCZ has acquired intellectual property assets from Solid Data Systems.

In March 2011 - OCZ announced it had signed a definitive agreement to acquire Indilinx for for approximately $32 million of OCZ common stock.

In June 2011 - OCZ was one of several compatible companies named in FlashSoft's launch of its auto tiering SSD software.

In August 2011 - OCZ launched a hybrid PCIe SSD - the RevoDrive Hybrid - which integrates 100GB SSD capacity along with an onboard 1TB HDD and SSD ASAP / auto hot spot cache tuning controller capable of 910MB/s peak throughput and upto random write 120,000 IOPS (4K) at an MSRP under $500. This was reviewed later (Oct 2011) in an article in HotHardware.com .

In September 2011 - OCZ announced it is supplying custom 7.5mm high 128GB SATA SSDs which use its Indilinx Everest SSD controller to LG for use in its in LGP220 ultra-thin notebooks.

OCZ also launched its Synapse Cache Series 2.5" SATA SSDs for Windows 7 environments. The new SSDs (64GB / 128GB, R/W speeds upto 510/550MB/s, 80,000 IOPS) integrate NVELO's Dataplex cache / SSD ASAP software to dynamically manage the SSD in conjunction with standard hard disk drives. When used to support a pre-existing terabyte hard drive - the overall performance for popular PC benchmar tasks can be 4x to 6x faster - as the software learns the where the hot data is for that user's PC - according to benchmarks and data in OCZ's related white paper (pdf) . No data migration or OS installation is required.

In October 2011 OCZ agreed to acquire the UK Design Team (approximately 40 engineers located in Abingdon) and certain assets from PLX Technology which will enable OCZ to accelerate the development of its next generation of fast SSDs - while also reducing development costs.

In November 2011 - OCZ launched 2 new models in their full height PCIe SSD range - aimed at the Windows consumer market - the RevoDrive 3 Max IOPS (120GB to 480GB costs $549-$1,399) and RevoDrive 3 X2 Max (240GB to 960GB costs $849-$2,499) with 4KB random write performance of up to 245,000 IOPS, and R/W rates upto 1,900MB/s and 1,725MBs/ respectively.

OCZ also started sampling dual port 6Gbps SAS SSDs in a smaller form factor - the Talos 2 SAS SSD provides upto 70,000 4K IOPS (75R/25W) and upto 1TB capacity in 2.5" (previously only available in 3.5" size).

In December 2011 - OCZ reported preliminary revenue for the past quarter (ended November 30) to be in the range $100 and $105 million - an increase of approximately 90% compared to the year ago quarter and a 30% increase compared to the immediately preceding quarter. The company attributed much of this to its growing traction in the enterprise SSD market.

In January 2012 - OCZ announced is now demonstrating at the Storage Visions 2012 Conference new PCIe SSDs - which use SSD controllers jointly developed with Marvell (instead of - as in previous models - controllers from SandForce).

OCZ also announced it has acquired SANRAD for $15 million.

In February 2012 - OCZ today announced imminent shipments of new high capacity PCIe SSDs optimized for cloud apps. The Z-Drive R4 CloudServ (which uses 16x SandForce 2581 SSD processors) has up to 16TB of storage capacity on a single full height card and is supported by auto-caching SSD ASAP fuctionality (based on the acquisition of SANRAD's VXL) and OCZ's VCA 2.0 which together enable host migrations without loss of performance or interruption of service.

In April 2012 - OCZ launched what the company says - is the industry's fastest IOPS 2.5" SATA MLC SSD family (across a range of apps) - the Vertex 4 (based on OCZ's own regular RAM cache Everest 2 controller) delivers 95K / 85K random IOPS (4K blocks) and 535 MB/s throughput.

In March 2013 - OCZ announced the general availability of VXL 1.3 (SSD software) - which enables PCIe SSD flash volumes (on the company's Z-Drive R4) to be virtualized and synchronously mirrored, so they are continuously available to support HA and FT services from within the virtualized host without the need for any back-end SAN or storage appliance.

In July 2013 - OCZ announced the general availability of its ZD-XL SQL Accelerator - an SSD ASAP appliance - delivered as a PCIe SSD (600GB, 800GB or 1.6TB) and bundled software - which optimizes caching of SQL Server data in Windows environments - and can provide upto 25x faster database performance.

In October 2013 - OCZ announced that its filings had restored the compliance into compliance for its listing on NASDAQ.

In January 2014 - Toshiba announced details of how OCZ Storage Solutions (which was based on the recently acquired assets of OCZ Technology Group) will operate within the Toshiba Group of Companies. The new OCZ Storage Solutions, under the continuing direction of CEO Ralph Schmitt - will leverage Toshiba's NAND and combine it with the company's proprietary controllers, firmware and software to provide both client and enterprise customers with innovative and cost-effective SSD solutions.

In September 2014 - OCZ announced it was sampling a new 2.5" hot swappable enterprise PCIe SSD - the Z-Drive 6000 - a native PCIe 3.0 NVMe 1.1 solution - which the company said - "provides industry-leading IOPS per dollar".
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SSD ad - click for more info

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There hasn't been a stable market template for vendors to follow from one seemingly chaotic year to the next as they encroach on new markets.
Decloaking hidden segments in the enterprise

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"One petabyte of enterprise SSD could replace 10 to 50 petabytes of raw HDD storage in the enterprise - and still run all the apps faster and at lower cost."
meet Ken and the SSD event horizon

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VDI bootstorm - SSD vs HDD ... Editor:- my very short list of useful SSD videos includes this one from OCZ (Feb 2012) which demonstrates SSD vs HDD in a VDI bootstorm. It illustrates how fast virtual desktops power up - on the SAN - when 1/2 are connected to HDDs and the other 1/2 are accelerated via one of the company's Z-drive PCIe SSDs.


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more SSD articles on StorageSearch.com
  • SSD Myths - "write endurance" - In theory the problems are now well understood - but solving them presents a challenge for each new chip generation.
  • PCIe SSDs - lists oems who market PCIe SSDs, and news and market commentary. We've reported on PCIe SSDs since the first products shipped in 2007.
  • SSD controllers & IP - this is a directory of merchant market SSD controller chip technology providers.
  • SSD market history - If you're new to the market it provides a clue to how much things have changed - and how fast (or how slowly).
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Toshiba launches fast M.2 SSD for notebooks
Editor:- May 19, 2016 - May 24, 2016 - Toshiba today launched its fastest yet SSD for the consumer upgrade market in the US.

The OCZ RD400 is an M.2 form factor NVMe PCIe SSD with 0.3 DWPD endurance and sequential R/W of 2,200 / 620MB/s (for the entry level 128GB model).
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OCZ does that 3rd generation SSD firmware cloud thing (but gives it a better name)
Editor:- October 16, 2015 - It's no longer just the newcomers to the enterprise SSD market who are doing that 3rd generation / co-operative (whatever you want to call it) SSD controller firmware and host stack collaboration thing.

OCZ this week announced they're doing it too.

It's available in the Saber 1000 (2.5" cloud oriented, read mostly SSDs). And they've got a better name for it too - "Host Managed SSD Technology".

"Our new Saber HMS SSD, together with a software library and API, enable for the first time (in OCZ's product line) software orchestration of internal housekeeping tasks across large pools of SSDs, thus overcoming performance barriers that were simply not possible to address without this technology" said Oded Ilan, GM of OCZ's R&D Team in Israel.

"With HMS APIs, a host can coordinate garbage collection, log dumps, and drive geometry data" (and graphics too) in OCZ's HMS product brief (pdf)
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OCZ's new 3TB 2.5" hot swap NVMe SSDs
OCZ 2.5 inch hot swap PCIe SSDEditor:- May 20, 2015 - OCZ today revealed more details about the new models shipping in its NVMe compatible PCIe SSD family - which was first announced last September. We had already heard before these new models include 2.5" hot swappable versions.

Today OCZ said this model - the Z-Drive 6300 SFF will be available with usable capacities of 800GB, 1.6TB and 3.2TB (in this quarter) followed by 6.4TB (later this year).

R/W performance is upto 2.9GB/s and 1.4GB/s respectively. Random R/W IOPS are 700K IOPS and 120K IOPS. Latencies are 30s (write) and 80s (read). Endurance options are 1 or 3 DWPD.

high availability and reliability features

The new Z-Drive 6000 models are dual ported so that 2 host systems can concurrently access the same SSD.

Additionally, the Z-Drive 6000 Series supports hot swapping of 2.5" drives, pre-set power thresholds and temperature throttling to support many types of enterprise ecosystems.

Editor's comments:- for various reasons to do with a combination of standardization efforts and changes of ownership for nearly every major enterprise PCIe SSD company in the market - you've had to wait 3 years since the idea of this kind of product was first discussed seriously on these pages and at conferences.

What has become clear to systems architects is that these new products offer far more flexibility in their roles than merely performance upgrades to high end SAS SSDs and traditional storage arrays.

Among other things these new types of products will enable lower cost mini SSD server clustering at PCIe latencies which will spur growth in the SDS market. At the high end - they could become the new building blocks inside the world's most powerful computer arrays.
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SSD ad - click for more info

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OCZ and Levyx aim to shrink server-counts and DRAM in real-time big data analytics
Editor:- February 10, 2015 - OCZ and Levyx today announced a technological collaboration whereby the 2 companies will develop and validate a new type of flash as DRAM solution which will be positioned as a competitive alternative to DRAM rich server arrays used in many big-data real-time analytics environments.

As demand for immediate I/O responses in Big Data environments continues to increase, our ultra-low latency software paired with high-performance SSDs represent a better and more cost-effective alternative to traditional scale-out architectures that rely heavily on DRAM-constrained systems, said Dr. Reza Sadri, CEO and co-Founder of Levyx Inc. We are pleased to work with OCZ on this new usage model as our technology is specifically designed to leverage the latest in advanced SSD technologies and well utilize the Z-Drive 4500 (PCIe SSD) to deliver the enhanced performance that helps validate our technology.

Editor's later comments:- "retiring and retiering enterprise DRAM " was one of the big SSD ideas which emerged in 2015.

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how reliable are consumer SSDs?

new data from OCZ
Editor:- February 12, 2015 - OCZ recently published data about the reliability of its past generations of consumer SSDs.

OCZ says that the SSDs it has shipping since it has been a Toshiba group company (and using Toshiba's flash) are about 40x more reliable than OCZ's popular consumer SSDs were about 4 years before. And part of the story is also changes in controller technology.


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OCZ samples hot swap, fast 2.5" NVMe SSDs
Editor:- September 9, 2014 - OCZ announced it will begin imminent sampling of a new 2.5" hot swappable enterprise PCIe SSD - the Z-Drive 6000 - a native PCIe 3.0 NVMe 1.1 solution - which the company says "provides industry-leading IOPS per dollar".

It has a SFF-8639 connector, internal RAID, power loss data protection, "consistent low latency", and encryption.

OCZ also unveiled a new SATA SSD aimed at customers in hyperscale and cloud markets - the Saber 1000 - which uses OCZ's Barefoot 3 controller and Toshiba's 19nm nand flash memory.

Editor's comments:- Although OCZ demonstrated the SSD industry's first working 3.5" PCIe SSD prototype 4 years ago - in August 2010 - the company didn't follow through to establish an early lead in its natural successor - the 2.5" enterprise PCIe market.

The main reason for that loss of momentum was financial problems at OCZ which for a few years weighed against introducing new products which didn't have immediate profitable markets.

Now, however, with OCZ having been almost a year as a Toshiba group company - the small form factor enterprise NVMe market looks like a natural fit for OCZ - as an extension of its long running conventional form factor PCIe SSD accelerator business and SAS SSD product lines.


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OCZ announces availability of ZD-XL SQL Accelerator 1.5
Editor:- July 15, 2014 - OCZ this week announced availability of version 1.5 of its ZD-XL SQL Accelerator (PCIe SSD and caching software bundle) the beta version of which was announced in April. Highlights:-
  • flash Buffer Pool Extension (BPE) support
  • better granularity of database files that need to be accelerated - than version 1.0.
  • remote flash services - enables remote network connected blade servers to access cached PCIe flash storage using OCZ's proprietary Direct Pass Caching Technology.
Small system performance? - Internal testing performed by OCZ delivered over one million TPMs for a sample of 50 virtual users when ZD-XL SQL Accelerator 1.5 was located in the same server as the SQL application.

For larger enterprises/data centers that use ZD-XL SQL Accelerator 1.5 in a traditional HA SAN storage environment, the embedded software can cache large database files from the SAN onto server-side flash either locally or remotely - with 5x speedups (compared to native HDD SAN performance) being realistic goals.

Editor's comments:- This product is aimed at the same applications as Violin's Windows Flash Array (WFA)

The main differences are:-
  • OCZ has been selling into the entry level enterprise SQL acceleration market as a business focus for much longer than Violin (years rather than months).

    In contrast - Violin's history has been mostly as a very high performance SSD supplier - and until recently Violin only encountered small SSD applications as departmental use cases within big SSD customer sites.
  • With Violin's WFA you get an integrated system - but have to buy the servers from Violin.
  • With OCZ's ZD-XL SQL Accelerator - you have the freedom to use any servers you like - as long as they have enough spare slots to install the PCIe SSD cards. But you have to know a bit more about what you're doing - and the performance is unique to your system.
See also:- ZD-XL SQL Accelerator 1.5 case studies and white papers


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OCZ launches Z-Drive 4500
19nm WXL caching PCIe SSD
Editor:- March 4, 2014 - OCZ is still using LSI's SandForce SSD controllers (8x SF-2582 enterprise SATA (pdf)) in its newest PCIe SSD - the Z-Drive 4500 Series - launched today - which has upto 3.2TB of usable 19nm flash, R/W bandwidth of 2.9GB/s and 2.2 GB/s respectively, and 252K / 76 K R/W IOPS (4KB) in a FHHL form factor and is integrated with OCZ's new WXL caching software.

See also:- ...Z-Drive 4500 briefing notes (pdf)

Editor's comments:- OCZ's VXL bundles have been very successful in small to medium scale enterprise deployments. The evolution of this product line - supporting as it does another new generation of (lower cost) memory - will further extend its reach.


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OCZ relaunches as a Toshiba Group company
Editor:- January 21, 2014 - Toshiba today announced some details of how OCZ Storage Solutions (which was based on the recently acquired assets of OCZ Technology Group) will operate within the Toshiba Group of Companies.

The new OCZ Storage Solutions, under the continuing direction of CEO Ralph Schmitt - will leverage Toshibas cutting-edge NAND and combine it with the companys proprietary controllers, firmware and software to provide both client and enterprise customers with innovative and cost-effective SSD solutions.

OCZ Storage Solutions will continue to maintain its established worldwide sales channels. Its headquarters will remain in San Jose, California, with strategic design centers located in Irvine (California), Tel Aviv (Israel), and Abingdon (UK).

The acquisition of OCZ further expands our solid-state storage capabilities and represents Toshibas commitment to this high-growth area, said Seiichi Mori, VP of Toshiba's Semiconductor and Storage Company. Our goal is to offer a leading edge portfolio of solid state solutions to address the storage challenges faced by both client and enterprise customers, and the acquisition of OCZ is an ideal addition to our team in realizing this strategy.

The acquisition provides Toshiba with OCZs enterprise and client SSD businesses and enables the established OCZ brand to continue in full force with a current product portfolio that includes SATA and PCIe consumer drives for high-performance and mainstream applications, and SATA, SAS and PCIe enterprise drives supported by virtualization, cache and acceleration software.


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OCZ ships PCIe SSD based SQL accelerator
Editor:- July 23, 2013 - OCZ today announced the general availability of its ZD-XL SQL Accelerator - an SSD ASAP appliance - delivered as a PCIe SSD (600GB, 800GB or 1.6TB) and bundled software - which optimizes caching of SQL Server data in Windows environments - and can provide upto 25x faster database performance.

HA functionality works through Microsoft SQL Server AlwaysOn technology, so that in the event of planned or unplanned downtime, can continue operations from the stopping point, retaining all of its data as if no downtime had occurred.

"We believe that the industry is primed for this type of tightly integrated, plug-and-play use-case acceleration solution..." said Ralph Schmitt, CEO - OCZ Technology.

Editor's comments:- One of the differentiators in SSD caching products is the sophistication of their behavior when viewed from a time basis. This is 1 of the 11 key SSD symmetries - which I call "age symmetry".

In this respect - a key feature of ZD-XL SQL Accelerator is its business-rule pre-warming cache engine and cache warm-up analyzer that monitors SQL Server workloads and automatically pre-loads the cache in advance of critical, demanding or important SQL Server jobs. It achieves this by identifying repeated access patterns that enable DBAs to set periodic time schedules to pre-load the cache.

This product won Best of Show Award at an event called Interop in May.


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OCZ is now an enterprise SSD company
Editor:- July 15, 2013 - OCZ's quarterly enterprise SSD revenue has grown to over $25 million - approximately half of its total SSD revenue - the company announced today.

Editor's comments:- from a revenue perspective OCZ's situation is way down compared to the situation it had predicted in May 2012 - when the company reported that its revenue for the year ending February 29, 2012 was $338 million - and at that time OCZ was suggesting that its revenue for the following year would be over $600 million.

That didn't happen for reasons reported earlier - partly due to errors in accounting but also due to better judgement - and decisions to withdraw and downsize sales in the most unprofitable segments of the SSD market - which at that time were consumer SSDs.

OCZ's latest results show that it is possible for a company which started out as a consumer SSD company to change itself into being a (mostly) enterprise SSD business. (Although it wasn't quick, painless or easy.)

That's an identity switch which some other significant SSD companies would also like to do for themselves too.


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OCZ's SATA SSDs advance to 20nm
Editor:- February 19, 2013 - OCZ today announced imminent availability of 20nm flash technology 2.5" SATA SSDs - based on LSI's SandForce SF-2200 SSD controllers - as extensions to OCZ's popular Vertex 3 SSD Series.
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