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| SAS SSD -
market timeline | |
The
SAS SSD market was the
slowest part of the SSD market to take off - in the post "SSD awareness"
era. For many years there were only 1 or 2 vendors in the market.
birth
of SAS storage
November 2001 - Serial Attached SCSI was
proposed as a new interface.
StorageSearch.com became the 1st
publisher to set up a dedicated directory for
SAS storage.
users
say they need SAS SSDs
January 2005 - the
SSD buyers survey
showed SAS SSDs as the 8th most desirable SSD interface to meet buyers' future
needs.
1st SAS SSD ships to customers
April
2005 -
Solid Access
Technologies made the first SSD with a SAS interface. It was a rackmount
RAM SSD.
1st flash SAS SSD
August 2007 -
STEC announced it was
designing a
3.5" SAS SSD.
December
2008 - Hitachi and
Intel announced they were
jointly designing a new range of high IOPS flash SSDs with
SAS interfaces -
expected to ship in Q1 2010.
SAS SSD market starts tos bubble
January
2009 - As the number of oems talking about SAS SSDs headed towards double
digits - StorageSearch.com launched a dedicated directory page for
SAS SSDs.
May
2009 - StorageSearch.com disclosed that searches for SAS SSDs had overtaken
searches for
FC compatible SSDs.
February 2010 -
Gartner estimates
cited in the article -
the
Evolving Enterprise SSD - suggest that the SAS SSD market size may reach
approximately 2 million units in 2013.
June 2010 - SAS
SSD oems list on StorageSearch.com reaches 14 companies with announcement by
Super Talent
Technology.
August 2010 -
SMART started
sampling the
XceedIOPS
SAS SSD - a 2.5" 400GB eMLC SSD with 26,000 / 20,000 R/W
IOPS and
250/230 MB/s sustained throughput. | | |
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Megabyte had already mastered
serial SCSI
for RPM storage - so SAS SSDs were a breeze. | |
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SMART samples 400GB 2.5"
SAS eMLC SSD
Editor:- August 17, 2010 - SMART entered
the crowding SAS SSD
market with the announcement that it is sampling the
XceedIOPS
SAS SSD - a 2.5" 400GB eMLC SSD with 26,000 / 20,000 R/W
IOPS and
250/230 MB/s sustained throughput.
The new XceedIOPS SAS SSD offers
high reliability and data integrity due to extensive error-correction and
detection capabilities, multi-level data-path and code protection, data-fail
recovery, and data-integrity monitoring. Designed to minimize power surges in
SSD arrays the the XceedIOPS SAS SSD supports staggered power-on.
Pliant nabs Dot Hill's VP software engineering
Editor:-
August 3, 2010 - Pliant
Technology today
announced
the appointment of Mark
Delsman as VP of engineering.
In his new role, Delsman will manage the software, hardware and
ASIC development
organizations to expand Pliant's position in the enterprise storage market for
solid state based
technologies. See also:-
Storage People
Infortrend joins the STEC inside club
Editor:- July
22, 2010 - Infortrend
today
announced
it will use STEC's
ZeusIOPS (SAS SSDs) in
its ESVA F60 product line (FC
RAID systems).
and Super Talent... brings SAS SSD headcount to 14
Editor:-
June 21, 2010 - Super Talent
Technology entered the
2.5"
SAS SSD market by
announcing
imminent shipments of its ShuttleCraft brand - which includes SLC and MLC
models with capacities upto 240GB .
Solid Access reveals fastest NAS SSD rackmount has SAS inside
Editor:-
June 4, 2010 - I was curious to learn more about the flash SSD modules inside
the
UNAS
100 - a very fast
rackmount
NAS SLC flash SSD
launched last month .
- so I asked Tomas Havrda, Managing Partner for more info.
He
confirmed my guess that the internal interface in the rackmount SSD is
SAS - an interface
with which they are very familiar - having shipped the world's 1st SAS RAM SSD
in 2005.
"After a search of almost 2 years, we partnered with a
Flash SSD vendor that provided the type of sustained, predictable performance
Solid Access required to bring an entry to market. This has always been one of
the major attributes of our DRAM SSD appliances and we needed to find Flash
technology that reasonably approximates this capability to continue to project
Solid Access's image as a high performance storage appliance vendor offering
products that will perform next month or next year the same way as today.
"We were also equally concerned about
performance drop off
from Burst to Steady State mode and our selected vendor has the least
performance loss of the vendors we tested or have been able to obtain results
for."
He didn't say whose SSD module they use. The advantage of
using a pre-existing product is
performance and
reliability and
lower cost in low
volumes - compared to the cost of making your own flash SSD which is only a
lower cost - if it works and after you've sold enough of them to amortize the
cost of the initial design. These tradeoffs are discussed in
3 Easy Ways to Enter
the SSD Market.
RunCore samples SAS SSDs
Editor:- May 7, 2010 - RunCore is now
sampling (its previously announced)
2.5" and
3.5"
SAS flash SSDs for the
enterprise server market.
The Kylin II product line, available with
MLC, EMLC or SLC
flash, has R/W speeds upto 270MB/s and 260MB/s respectively, R/W
IOPS of
30,000 and 25,000, upto 400GB capacity and 3 years warranty.
and Foremay - makes "lucky 13" SAS SSD oems
Editor:-
April 29, 2010 - Foremay
has started sampling SAS
SSDs in its
EC188
product line.
The new models (available in
2.5" or
3.5" form factors,
and available in commercial and industrial temperature grades) have R/W speeds
of 250MB/s and 200MB/s respectively, random read/write
IOPS up to
30,000/25,000 and upto 400GB capacity.
That brings the number of
SAS SSD companies
listed on StorageSearch.com to 13.
Nimbus nixes STEC SAS SSD costs in new iSCSI rackmount
Editor:-
April 26, 2010 - Nimbus
Data Systems today
launched
its S-class
storage system - a 2U 10GbE rackmount SSD with 24 hot swappable
internal 6Gbps SAS
flash SSD blades in an 80W power footprint offering 5TB protected capacity for
$39,995.
Powered by Nimbus' HALO storage OS the systems support
iSCSI, NFS, and CIFS
protocols and provide inline
deduplication
(typically 10 to 1), continuous local and remote replication capability
in-the-box at no additional cost. Data protection inside the box ensures that no
data is lost even with 2 simultaneous blade faults.
Editor's
comments:- there has been a lack of market leadership in the
NAS compatible
rackmount SSD
market. This new product from Nimbus shows what can be achieved with a true
bottom up enterprise design - in the same way that for
FC SAN connected
applications you'd look at systems from
Texas Memory Systems
and in the PCIe
connected rackmount SSD market you'd look at
NextIO or at
Violin Memory.
I spoke at length to Nimbus's CEO, Thomas Isakovich - about the new
systems. He's been a network storage OS pioneer for 10 years (prior to Nimbus
he founded
TrueSAN)
so I joked that - unlike many new SSD companies - at least this product wouldn't
be surprised by applications doing the wrong type of R/W IOPS (different to those
encountered in benchmark suites).
The 1st question I asked was
about the storage blades. I had already guessed (and he confirmed) the interface
was SAS. But the
surprise came when I asked whose
SSDs was he using?
Isakovich
said Nimbus makes its own SSDs - and that while the company was talking to many
SSD controller
suppliers - it planned from the outset to change these suppliers for other best
of breed alternatives as the market evolved. In this respect - Nimbus is
different to most others in the NAS SSD space - because the company supplies the
whole software stack from the choice of silicon up through the OS and into the
network. (Editor's note:- in contrast competitor
WhipTail Technologies'
product is a complex integrated bundle which uses 3rd party COTS
2.5" SSDs,
licenses the flash write attenuation software from
EasyCo and licenses
dedupe technology from Exar.)
I asked Isakovich does Nimbus use SLC or MLC? - he said the internal
flash is Micron's
"enterprise
grade MLC" - which has 6x the
endurance of
standard MLC.
He explained that Nimbus is aiming to offer a
competitively priced product (2.5TB model costs $24,995) but unlike other
vendors they decided not to offer separate
MLC or SLC
versions. The argument being that once you sold a system to a customer - let's
say a low cost MLC SSD for video streaming - you couldn't be sure that the
customer might not redeploy that same system into a different application
accelerating their database (which needs higher endurance). His thinking seems
to be that once the SSD rack is out in the wild of the enterprise environment -
it has to be tough enough to handle ALL enterprise applications.
The
flash systems include 28%
over-provisioning
and write attenuation.
I asked about the size of the RAM cache -
Isakovich said it's 48GB which puts it in the
fat flash SSD
class. Users do have options on how they can deploy this to tweak performance.
Unlike SSD ASAPs -
which are designed to accelerate
hard disk arrays - the
name of the game with the new Nimbus product line is to make it attractive for
users to place all their critical
IOPS
intensive data into SSD.
And with this new product Nimbus is saying -
they like the flexibility and features of
SAS SSDs - but that
doesn't mean to say the market has to pay
STEC or
Pliant
prices. |
|
| SAS SSD news |
RunCore samples SAS SSDs
Editor:-
May 7, 2010 - RunCore
is now sampling (its previously announced)
2.5" and
3.5"
SAS flash SSDs for the
enterprise server market.
The Kylin II product line, available with
MLC, EMLC or SLC
flash, has R/W speeds upto 270MB/s and 260MB/s respectively, R/W
IOPS of
30,000 and 25,000, 64MB
RAM cache,
upto 400GB capacity and 3 years warranty.
Pliant names former Google exec as VP Ops
Editor:-
April 20, 2010 - Pliant
Technology today
announced the
appointment of Frank
Kull as VP of operations.
He brings more than 15 years of
experience in operations management for Google, Cisco Systems and other leading
technology companies.
the Top 10 SSD oems - Q1 2010
Editor:- April 8, 2010
- StorageSearch.com today
published the 12th quarterly edition of
the top 10 SSD oems.
The
best predictor of future winners in the SSD market - this is always a
popular feature - with analysis and commentaries about the leading
companies.
...read the article
Pliant's SSD benchmark video
Editor:- March 15, 2010
- Pliant Technology
today published
benchmark results to illustrate the capability of its
3.5" SAS SSDs
when used in arrays.
The measurements performed and validated by
OakGate Technology were performed on an
array of 16 SSDs and are summarized in a
video.
"We
tested Lightning EFDs under conditions that closely mirrored the data throughput
demands of today's mission-critical data centers..." said Bob Weisickle,
CEO and founder of OakGate. "..even more impressive was the fact that
these phenomenal performance numbers remained stable and consistent over
time, which is a critical requirement for today's mission-critical 24x7 data
centers."
Editor's comments:- when (like me) you're used to seeing SSD
IOPS that
look like telephone numbers, and IOPS that have a
lot of GB/s in them
you have ask yourself - what is this vendor really saying?
I think the
point Pliant is making is that if you are an oem who wants to design a
rackmount flash
SSD which has the performance potential of a proprietary architecture such as
Texas Memory Systems,
or an array of PCIe SSDs
such as Fusion-io,
but you want to stay in the comfort zone of
SAS SSDs while avoiding
the "EMC use it so
it must be expensive" feel associated
STEC - please take a
look another look at their products. The tag line on their home page says "Do
more for less." (I've seen worse.) I've seen
better SSD videos
though. It was another 6 minutes of my life wasted (compared to reading the
text).
SSD Market Projections - from Denali & Gartner
Editor:-
February 9, 2010 - Denali
Software published an article -
the
Evolving Enterprise SSD - which comments on detailed SSD market size
predictions from Gartner
related to SSD form factors and interfaces.
This shows SAS SSDs as
18% of enterprise SSD unit shipments in 2010, increasing to 37%
in 2013 (by which time Gartner estimates the SAS SSD market size may reach
approximately 2 million units).
Viking Enters 2.5" 6Gbps SAS SSD Market
Editor:-
January 21, 2010 - Viking
Modular Solutions today
announced
it is sampling a range of SAS
and SATA compatible
SSDs using
controllers from SandForce.
Form
factors will include:- 1.8",
2.5" and
innovative "non-HDD-like"
solutions for space constrained and/or rugged applications.
OCZ Promises "SandForce inside" SAS SSDs
Editor:-
November 10, 2009 - OCZ
today
announced
it will launch a new SAS
SSD family based on SSD
SoCs from SandForce
which will probably be previewed at CES
in January 2010.
Editor's comments:- for more examples of who
else has already announced SandForce based SSDs (and in some cases is already
shipping them) see the article -
3 Easy Ways to Enter
the SSD Market.
Unigen Signals 2.5" SAS SSD Intent
Editor:-
November 2, 2009 -
Unigen announced
it will manufacture a new range of
flash SSDs using
SSD processors from SandForce.
The 2.5"
SSDs will be available with
SATA or
SAS interfaces.
Pliant Samples Fast 2.5" 3.5" SAS SSDs
Editor:-
September 14, 2009 - Pliant
Technology started sampling its
Lightning
family of 2.5"
(150GB) and 3.5"
(300GB) skinny
flash SAS SSDs.
The SLC drives deliver R/W rates upto 525/340MB/s and 160,000 IOPS
(for a 90% R, 10% W mix).
"The exceptional performance and
reliability features of Lightning Enterprise Flash Drives allow IT managers to
address the most significant challenges they're facing today, namely, keeping up
with continually increasing storage demands with fixed budgets, limited data
center floor space and the ever growing cost of power," said Amyl Ahola,
CEO of Pliant Technology. | |
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