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.
SSD
news
EOL SSDs
SAS SSDs
2.5" NVMe SSDs
the consumer SSDs guide
branding
strategies in the SSD market |
| ... |
 |
... |
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. |
. |
| "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 | | |
. |
|
|
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".
|
| . |
 |
. |
|
|
. |
| "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 | | |
. |
 |
... |
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. | | |
. |
| 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).
|
| |
| . |
|
|
|
StorageSearch.com
is published by
ACSL | |
... |
| 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).
| | |
| ... |
| 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) | | |
| . |
| OCZ's new 3TB 2.5" hot
swap NVMe SSDs |
 Editor:-
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. | | |
| ... |
 |
... |
| 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. | | |
... |
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. | | |
... |
| 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. | | |
... |
| 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
| | |
... |
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. | | |
. |
| 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. | | |
... |
| 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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