StreamStor optical option
sustains 3GB/s
Editor:- August 30, 2010 - Conduant announced
new optical options for its
StreamStor
mezzanine data recorders enabling upto 800MB/s per port and 3GB/s for a 4 port
confguration and cable lengths upto 16 miles.
Conduant's founder and
CEO Ken Owens said -
"Our Optical High Speed Serial Mezzanine Board can be upgraded and
customized in the field as requirements demand and allows for recording from
multiple devices simultaneously in any environment. With our StreamStor
technology, all packet formation and management is performed by the hardware so
there is no latency or other delays to affect data transmission performance."
pushing the SSD testing rock farther up the hill
Editor:-
August 25, 2010 - I'm mostly resistant to the idea of rehashing recent news
stories - but yesterday while talking about new SSD technologies a reader
asked me to take another look at
SNIA's SSD
performance testing guidelines - which I reported on
a month ago.
I
said I had been surprised it took
ORGs like
SNIA so long to look at
these issues - because I had been aware of "Halo effects" in
flash SSD benchymarks for years - and commented - "But I guess member
led ORGs have a built in lag factor and only move at the speed of the
slowest exec members."
The reader - Neal Ekker -
whom I knew from his time at
Texas Memory Systems -
put up a spirited defense for this particular ORG opus and said...
""...We've
all known about the fishy-ness of SSD performance claims for years. But I'd like
to draw attention to what an impressive accomplishment the SNIA SSS PTS
represents, no matter its technical merits or ramifications. I watched it
happen, and I can tell you it was an amazing POLITICAL achievement. And
I don't mean that in a negative way. Any time there's more than one person in a
room, there's politics. For a collection of engineers representing both their
own egos and the interests of their employers to finally agree on even this
rather bare-bones beginning standard was just remarkable to observe. I can't
begin to give enough credit to some of the chief movers and shakers.
Neal Ekker added - "This is why I want more attention focused on
the SSS PTS right now, so we don't lose momentum entirely. There's still plenty
of work to be done. We need additional companies and fresh faces and energies to
step up and push this rock a little farther up the hill."
Editor's comments:- During the majority of the SSS PTS development Neal
Ekker served as the SNIA SSSI Education Committee Chair. He's now a for-hire
independent SSD marketing consultant. ...Neal's bio,
...SSS
PTS (pdf), Storage
People
HDD Capex Report
Editor:- June 7, 2010 - Coughlin Associates
has published its 14th annual
HDD
Capital Equipment and Technology Report (pdf) (189 pages / $7,000).
Fueling
the need for more capex the authors anticipate that disk drive volumes will
more than double - from about 670M in 2010 to 1.4B in 2015 - and that
technology developments will result in 10TB 3.5"
HDDs and 1TB
1.8" drives.
SAS / SATA drive array tester reviewed by Demartek
Editor:-
March 22, 2010 - Quarch
Technology announced that
Demartek
had published a report (pdf) which reviews the usability and benefits of
its SAS/SATA disk array test system.
It's useful for integrators
qualifying components and modules for use in new
RAID systems.
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).
hyperI/O captures TRIM metrics
Editor:- March 1,
2010 - hyperI/O
announced
that its hIOmon software supports the collection of Microsoft "TRIM"
related SSD metrics -
which can be captured during normal, everyday application use and without
any OS, file system, file, or application changes required.
RunCore Ships 1st PXI Express SSDs
Editor:- January
5, 2010 - RunCore
has started shipments of the 1st SSDs aimed at the
PXI Express market (a standard
which brings PCIe performance and functionality into the robust modular form
factor popular in automated instrumentation
test systems).
RunCore's
3U CPCIe\PXIe SSD card provides upto 768GB
MLC or 384GB SLC
capacity and has sustained R/W speeds upto 400MB/s. Available with industrial
operating temperature range and MIL-STD-810F processing, the module provides a
fast purge rate of
5GB/s.
the Problem with Write IOPS - in flash SSDs
Editor:-
December 16, 2009 - StorageSearch.com
today published a new article -
the Problem with
Write IOPS - in flash SSDs.
Flash SSD "random write IOPS"
are now similar to "read IOPS" in many of the
fastest SSDs. So
why are they such a poor predictor of application performance?
And
why are users still buying
RAM SSDs which cost
9x more than SLC? - even when the IOPS specs look similar. This tells
you why the specs got faster - but the applications didn't. And why competing
SSDs with apparently identical benchmark results can perform completely
differently. ...read
the article
New Real-Time Design / Debug Tool for FC / NAS OEMs
Editor:-
March 25, 2009 - Absolute Analysis
has
announced
enhancements to its range of
serial data test tools
- such as...
- ability to check system behavior in the presence of latency (failure and
recovery) for Fibre Channel and Ethernet protocols, including
FCoE,
AFDX,
iSCSI, IP, IPv6, TCP
- ability to corrupt one or more network events in real-time and simulate
data loss, data corruption, protocol errors and data errors, and check device
under test error recovery procedures.
"Absolute Analysis is proud to offer engineers a much-needed
single solution featuring the integration of sophisticated tools for use in data
communications, telecommunications, and military communications, to capture,
analyze, delay, modify, and verify data at full line rate," stated Dennis
Murphy, President of Absolute Analysis. "This release... enables
in-line, real-time impairment testing coupled with a powerful error injector and
analysis that far exceed existing industry offerings." Storage Testers & Analyzers |
| History (of data
storage) |
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| . |
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Can You
Trust Your Flash SSD's Specs & Benchmarks? |
| No - sadly you
can't! There are many intrinsic technical reasons why you
can't believe most published benchmarks for flash SSDs
(whether done by magazines or vendors) and why even the
tests you carefully do yourself don't give reliable
results which correlate with how the SSD will perform in
real-life applications. |
| We warned you of it
this problem here on StorageSearch.com last year - and now
other publications and vendors are starting to take it
seriously too. ...read
the article | |
| . |
| Are MLC SSDs Safe
in Enterprise Apps? |
This is a follow up
article to the popular
SSD Myths and
Legends which, a year earlier demolished the myth that flash memory
wear-out (a comfort blanket beloved by many
RAM SSD makers)
precluded the use of flash in heavy duty datacenters.
This new
article looks at the risks posed by MLC Nand Flash SSDs which have recently
hatched from their breeeding ground as chip modules in cellphones and morphed
into
hard disk form
factors. |
 |
It starts down a familiar
lane but an unexpected technology twist (which arrived in my email while
writing this article) takes you to a startling new world of possibilities.
...read the
article | | | |
..... |
|
