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Market Trends in the Rackmount SSD Market

"Greasing the dataflow through legacy hard disk arrays" - Zsolt Kerekes, editor StorageSearch.com

This directory includes rackmount solid state disk arrays based on both flash SSDs and RAM SSDs. It includes SSD oems who actively market proprietary SSD rackmount products and integrators such as EMC who sell RAID arrays populated with COTS SSD modules.

The number of vendors in this category will rise to hundreds in the next 3 years as enterprise users become more familiar with the benefits of this type of storage.

Market entry costs are low...

It's easy for RAID systems oems to requalify their products to use SSDs. But unlike the transition to NAS which we chronicled in the late 1990s (where low performance products found valid application niches if they were cheap enough) the role of the SSD array today is primarily server acceleration. That means not all hard disk boxes will be optimal for use with SSDs. Slow bus interface adapters and slow RAID controllers will eat into the latency budget and squander potential SSD performance. I have no doubt that in addition to many worthy products - some abysmal SSD arrays will also come to market (populated by no / low performance SSDs) as floods of lemming like companies leap into the enterprise SSD surf.

Looking at future trends - the rackmount SSD market can be grouped in 4 main segments

I think that all 4 product types will survive in the market for several years.

The advantage of proprietary SSD rackmounts is they offer superior performance compared to COTS arrays of flash / RAM SSDs.

Apart from applications which need the ultimate performance - which can only be met by proprietary architecture SSDs - there can also be applications in which the proprietary products offer superior price / performance or reliability compared to "open SSDs".

For example - some proprietary SSD rackmounts use significantly less memory chips and electrical power to deliver a usable SSD capacity and resilience (compared to open systems) - due to the fact that they have been optimally designed as a rackmount solution. (In many open SSD arrays there is duplication of effort and wastage of performance due to optimization at the module level followed by another level on optimization at the array of modules level.)

The advantage of open SSD rackmounts is they appeal to users who want to reduce the risks of buying from new vendors - and who don't want to get locked into proprietary systems from long established SSD vendors.

The argument goes something like this..

Even if the original supplier of the proprietary 2.5" SSDs (used in the open array) exits the market - there are another 30 or so manufacturers of similar SSDs who can fill the unused / future disk slots at similar cost.

This argument is likely to appeal to conservative buyers - and may carry more weight than arguments about superior performance. Many customers will get "adequate" performance from these "safe, dull and open" SSD architectures. And even if they cost more today (than the proprietary SSD systems) - there's a realistic expectation that in future they will cost less (or get faster) due to competition in the SSD component / module market.

As you can see - the rackmount SSD market is far from simple. And there will be no such thing as a clear and present leader or winner which will satisfy all customers, applications or budgets until another 2-3 SSD product generations have been tested in the market. So it could remain a confusing picture till 2013.
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rackmount SSD news
91% of Compellent's Customers Want to Evaluate SSDs

Editor:- June 17 , 2009 Compellent today announced results generated through attendee polling conducted at its annual customer conference.

91% of business partners and 78% of customers responded important, very important or critical when asked, “What is your level of interest in evaluating SSDs in your environment?”


Sun Responds to User Needs for More SSD Capacity

Editor:- May 27, 2009 - Sun Microsystems announced today it has improved its hybrid rackmount storage systems to support an additional 600GB of flash SSD cache (compared to the current 64GB internal limit) for enhanced application performance.

The Sun Storage 7310 is available today and starts at a price of $40,165.

Editor's comments:- terabyte SSDs become commercially available in 2002 - so Sun's initial product offering last November - which supported a mere 36GB per 4U rack - was a sure sign that the company either didn't know what it was doing - or was being overly cautious.

There are plenty of rackmount SSD vendors in the market - and soon there will be hundreds more. There's wide diversity in product architectures (open versus proprietary) and applications experience in this part of the SSD market (ranging from months in the case of Sun - to more than a decade for companies like Solid Data Systems and Texas Memory Systems).

If you are thinking of buying an SSD from Sun - timing the purchase is a something to think about. In recent years Sun used to steeply discount towards the end of its quarter. I'm not sure how being part of Oracle will affect that. See also:- Hybrid Storage Drives


Dolphin's New StorExpress SSD Ships in May

Editor:- April 21, 2009 - MAGMA and Dolphin jointly announced they have collaborated to develop an improved version of the latter's previously announced StorExpress (2U rackmount PCIe connected SSD product line) which will ship next month.

Capacity options include 0.5TB (under $20K), 1TB and 2TB. It achieves 270K read and write IOPs (512 bytes to 4KB blocks) and up to 2.8GB/s of sustained bandwidth. Latency is less than 50µS. The StorExpress enclosure can be positioned 1,000 feet away from the host server using fiber.

"PCI Express, with its tight linkages to microprocessors is the natural technology for creating high performance systems" said Tim Miller, CEO Dolphin. "By partnering with Magma we have created an exceptional solution - simple, elegant, cost effective yet capable of delivering world class performance and flexibility."


New Module Aims at "must-have 100 terabytes SSD" Users

Editor:- April 21, 2009 - Texas Memory Systems announced the RamSan-620 - a 2U rackmount SLC Flash SSD with 2TB to 5TB capacity and 2 to 8 FC or InfiniBand ports.

Throughput is 3GB/s. R/W latency is 250µS and 80µS respectively. Transactional performance is 250,000 random IOPS. Power consumption is 325W. Multiple RamSan-620s can scale to higher capacities. Upto 100TB can fit in a single 40U rack.

"The IT community is looking for ways to increase storage efficiency while boosting productivity," said Greg Schulz, founding analyst at StorageIO and author of "The Green and Virtual Data Center".. "It is time to stop moving around I/O or other bottlenecks and start enabling storage efficiency via performance optimised storage that does more work, in a smaller footprint (power, cooling, floor-space, economic) while boosting productivity. Anyone can attach flash SSD to a computer or storage system; however the real trick and business benefit is when a storage system or applications server can fully utilise the technology without introduction of, or moving I/O and performance bottlenecks elsewhere. The RamSan-620 is an example of a new breed of storage solutions that have been optimised to leverage the capabilities of flash SSD while preserving application QoS and service level objectives."

Editor's comments:- there has been a lot of debate in the fastest lanes of the SSD accelerator market about whether it's better for users to deploy this technology inside the server box (as PCIe cards) - or outside the box (on the SAN). This is reminiscent of the old CISC vs RISC processor debates of the mid 1980s.

Entertaining as it is to analyze these polarized approaches I explained in my 2009 - Year of SSD Market Confusion and rackmount SSD articles why I believe that users will, in fact, do both.

Texas Memory Systems has in the past told me, that whenever they launch a new rackmount SSD they have some customers who just fill up a complete cabinet with the new model and use that as their basic unit of solid state storage until the next new model comes around. They'll only need 6.5kW for the 100TB SSD enabled by this model - and they'll get the transactional performance of 10,000 hard drives.


C-Drive Registrations Up 30%

Editor:- April 14, 2009 - Compellent announced today that registration for its annual channel partner and customer conference - C-Drive 2009 - is up 30% over the same time last year.

"While other industry conferences are being cancelled or scaled back, C-Drive 2009 is growing rapidly, because we offer our channel partners and customers valuable training sessions, demos and educational sessions in an open environment, making our event truly unique," explained Phil Soran, president and CEO, Compellent. "We're relentlessly striving to provide the most efficient storage available, and are excited to share the latest advancements and Compellent's outlook on the future of storage at this year's event."

Among other things attendees at the event next month - in Bloomington, MN - will get a preview of Compellent's enterprise SSDs.

Editor's comments:- I only mentioned this one because I thought "C-Drive" was a clever sounding name for a storage event.


Winchester Systems Unveils Rugged Rackmount SSD RAID

Editor:- March 5, 2009 - Winchester Systems says its will launch a range of rugged rackmount SSDs next week at FOSE .

Among the new products is a 1U RAID 5 / 6 protected rugged SSD array - the RX-1300 FlashDisk - which houses 12x 2.5" SSDs. Interface options for the array include SAS, FC and PCIe.

"Customers find that they need field deployable storage and servers that exceed standard commercial capabilities but not full military rugged specifications or prices," explained Mr. Joel Leider, the company's CEO. "Our rugged storage and servers provide extra security and protection against dust, rain, shock and vibration at COTS prices which are about half of full military standard costs."

The US Army has approved these units for field use. They are deployed in harsh environments worldwide in HUMVEEs and stationary shelters. FlashDisk RX disk arrays feature RAID 6 dual parity so even if 2 disk drives fail or become unreadable, the data will remain intact. See also:- Military & Rugged Storage.


Nimbus Offers Drive Agnostic NAS

San Francisco, CA - February 9, 2009 - Nimbus Data Systems today announced the H-class RH100 quad port 10GbE unified storage system.

It offers up to 60x hot-swappable SATA (terabyte HDDs supported), SAS (450GB HDDs), or SSD drives (7.7TB capacity if populated by supported 128GB SSDs). Drives can be mixed within the same enclosure. The RH100 includes no-additional-charge snapshot, cloning, and replication software, built-in iSCSI SAN and NAS capabilities. The RH100 has a 4GB cache and 60Gbps internal bandwidth. Nimbus says it can be up and running in just 20 minutes. ...Nimbus profile


NetApp Starts Walking the SSD Talk

Sunnyvale, Calif. - February 3, 2009 - NetApp unveiled 2 strands in its solid state storage acceleration strategy today - support for Texas Memory Systems' RamSan-500 flash SSD array and also a new Performance Acceleration Module.

Support for the 100K IOPS RamSan-500 SSD is supplied by NetApp's V-Series storage controller and Data ONTAP software. The RamSan-500 can be utilized as a large, fast networked cache, or otherwise partitioned to maximize storage efficiency.

Meanwhile - the new PAM provides a read cache (16GB to 80GB) implemented by PCI Express DRAM cards. These enables NetApp customers to significantly increase application performance in FC disk arrays by 35% using 1/2 the number of hard disks typically used in over-provisioned HDD arrays. Alternatively customers can deploy lower cost, higher density SATA HDDs instead of FC disks while still maintaining performance and making substantial savings in costs. ...Network Appliance profile, ...Texas Memory Systems profile

Editor's comments:-
better late than never - NetApp's announcements today make it easier and less risky for their customers to feel comfortable in following a long established trend to accelerate network applications performance with SSDs while reducing overall systems costs

Although NetApp's PAM is a PCIe RAM card and not a PCIe flash SSD - it's just a short walk from one to the other. I have little doubt the company has already been evaluating options in this market space..


RAID Inc Launches 1U Rackmount SSD

Methuen, MA - January 27, 2009 - RAID Inc. announced the availability of its new 1U SSD RAID.

The Razor SSD is a 12 bay 4 port fibre-channel system using COTS 2.5" SAS SSDs in a RAID protected array. The Razor comes with RAID's patent pending StorageWatch service - which proactively monitors storage conditions in real-time. ...RAID Inc profile, rackmount SSDs


HDS Joins the SSD Waggon Train

SANTA CLARA, Calif. - December 15, 2008 - Hitachi Data Systems today announced general availability of flash-based SSDs for its Universal Storage Platform V and VM.

HDS plans to offer flash-based SSDs in 73GB and 146GB capacities for the Hitachi USP V and USP VM storage systems in Q1 2009. ...Hitachi Data Systems profile, rackmount SSDs


Solid Access Launches World's Fastest 1U Rackmount SSD

Austin, TX - November 17, 2008 - At SC08 today Solid Access Technologies announced the immediate availability of its new generation of DRAM SSD products, the USSD Series 300.

Solid Access says the 4 new models are aimed at organizations requiring the highest capacity, "no compromises" IOPS and data bandwidth performance in the smallest possible footprint. Interface options within the family include 8Gbps Fibre Channel, 6Gbps SAS and 320MB/s LVD SCSI interfaces. R/W latency is under 10 microseconds and the models support upto 100K IOPS on a single port.
  • Model 310 is a 256GB, 1U rackmount offering for high IOPS needs
  • Model 310T is a 1TB, 4U tower, targeted at high performance databases
  • Model 315 is a combined server and 128GB RAM SSD, 1U device, for custom projects
  • Model 320, a 256GB, 2U product which supports upto 6 ports and 4GB/s sustained aggregated data bandwidth.
Solid Access says it guarantees equivalent or better application I/O acceleration as well as the lowest price of any comparable SSD, and has launched a "test before you buy" program.

"Five years ago when we introduced the first open architecture, ultra-fast DRAM SSD, our goal was to offer the best performance, most flexible interfacing, highest density and best price of any offering in the segment" said Tomas Havrda, Solid Access Managing Director. "The new USSD 300 Series is the capstone to our efforts in a year in which we have enjoyed 500% growth. The recent 28 unit USSD sale to Samsung Securities is further proof that customers of all sizes are taking notice." ...Solid Access Technologies profile

Editor's comments:-
for several years there has been a gap in the market for a really high performance 1U rackmount SSD. My gut feeling is it could become a very popular form factor in Google style (democratic) server architectures - which contain large numbers of identical servers..

As the cost of RAM SSDs easily makes them the most expensive box per rackmount unit in the datacenter - the availability of 1U models reduces the incremental deployment costs for customers who are continuously upgrading their systems. It also lowers the cost of holding immediately deployable spares.


Violin Advances flash SSD Architecture for Enterprise Acceleration

Iselin, New Jersey - November 10, 2008 - Violin Memory, Inc. today reached out to markets beyond those accessible to its RAM based storage appliance line by announcing the availability of a fast 2U 4TB SLC flash SSD.

Designed for enterprise server acceleration - Violin's flash technology enables over 100K sustained random Write IOPS (4K block) and write throughput is upto 400MB/s. Latency is 70-300 microseconds and the internal architecture eliminates the multi-millisecond variability seen in most current SSD arrays.

Endurance can be an issue with some fast flash SSDs. But you don't have to do the calculations because the Violin 1010 with 4TB SLC Flash can sustain its top speed 100K Write IOPS for a 100% duty cycle over its projected 10 year life. Price is competitive - at a system cost less than $50 per GByte.

System capacities range from 320GB to 4 TBytes within a single appliance. Fibre Channel and Ethernet network attachments are supported via a network head and direct attachment through a low latency PCIe connection. Supported OS's include:- major Linux releases, Windows and OpenSolaris. Violin Memory will be demonstrating the new product next week at SC08. ...Violin Memory profile
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click to read article:- SSD Market History
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rackmount SSD OEMs
Asine

Attorn

BiTMICRO Networks

Compellent

Concurrent Computer

Coraid

Curtis

Dell

Dolphin

EasyCo

EMC

Fuji Xerox

Gear6

Hitachi Data Systems

Network Appliance

Nimbus Data Systems

Pillar Data Systems

Rackable Systems

RAID

RunCore

SeaChange International

SEEK Systems

Solid Access Technologies

Solid Data Systems

Storspeed

Sun Microsystems

Superior Data Solutions

Taejin Infotech

Texas Memory Systems

Third I/O

TiGi

Vanguard Rugged Storage

Verari Systems

Violin Memory

ViON

WhipTail Technologies

Winchester Systems
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RAM
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Military storage
Military STORAGE
Sir Squeaks-a-Bit
rackmount SSDs
If he had his way... Sir Squeaks-a-Bit
would stretch all 15K RPM disk pretenders
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Easyco enterprise flash SSD 1U, 2U or 3U silver or black
1U, 2U, 3U enterprise flash SSDs
MFT accelerated appliances
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4U 100,000 IOPs 2 terabyte flash SSD from TMS
RamSan-500 - 2 terabytes flash SSD
2 gigabytes / sec sustained storage throughput
from Texas Memory Systems

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world's fastest production PCIe SSD
from Fusion-io

Violin 1010 - world's densest  DRAM  array -  for  HPC and data center server acceleration
world's fastest 2U RAM-SSD
from Violin Memory

Universal Solid State Disk USSD 200 from Solid Access Technologies with SAS, FC, SCSI or custom interfaces
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