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Violin
Memory is pioneering the future of enterprise solid state systems, with flash
Memory Arrays that deliver unprecedented sustainability and low spike-free
latency for the company seeking to accelerate its business critical applications
and to virtualize and optimize their IT infrastructure. |
.... |
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Specifically designed for
extreme sustained performance with high reliability and serviceability, Violin's
flash-based appliances scale to tens of terabytes of capacity, millions of IOPs
per second, gigabytes per second of bandwidth at low latency. Founded in 2005,
Violin Memory is headquartered in Mountain View, California. For more
information, visit www.vmem.com |
see also:-
Violin
- editor mentions on StorageSearch.com and
Violin's SSD blog | |
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Who's
who in SSD? - by Zsolt Kerekes -
November 23, 2011
Violin Memory is listed in various of my
enterprise SSD directories including:-
the top 20 SSD companies,
the fastest SSDs,
FC SAN SSDs and
iSCSI SSDs.
In
the highly competitive market of enterprise SSDs Violin is unusual in being a
company which - having launched its first product (in
August 2007) -
realized it had got things slightly wrong, then went back into stealth mode,
restructured its product, changed its management team and financing and then
re-emerged a few years later with a better sense of where it was going - and has
since lived to tell the tale. It's #2 in the top SSD companies list (Q3 2011).
I
wouldn't recommend other companies to try this disjointed route to market - but
sometimes that's just the way it happens. And it shows that if your core
technology is advanced enough - you may have enough time to to learn from
customers what you need to do to re-package the tech in a way that's more
relevant to their needs - before anyone else can get ahead of you and steal the
market away.
Violin's first systems (in 2007) were enterprise grade
PCIe connected solid state memory accelerators. As we know from what happened
afterwards - enterprise users are comfortable with the idea of
PCIe SSDs so long as
they are cards - but when it comes to
rackmount SSDs
they prefer to stick with traditional network storage connectivity - rather than
introduce a new type of storage box.
The core of Violin's technology
is a big
architecture memory array which enables non blocking reads after flash
writes, has full duty cycle garbage collection and delivers "spike-free"
sustainable performance.
When I spoke to Violin's CEO -
Don
Basile recently about this he said that inside their protection
array they're actually doing 5x more IOPS than the customer is seeing
outside the box and on the datasheet.
Speed is a core dimension of
what Violin's
6000
series rackmount SSDs offer. Another is reliability (no single point of
failure). But the company's positioning is that it offers very high density,
high performance tier 1 storage at a competitive
price per terabyte
that connects to legacy SANs. If you like what fast SAN SSDs can do for your
apps - then this one of the companies which has to be on your shortlist.
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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- editor's earlier comments:- October 2011
-
Violin Memory - was #2
in the top 20 SSD companies list in Q3 2011 (published by
StorageSearch.com in October 7, 2011) - the company's highest position since
these quarterly search based rankings began - and up 2 positions since the
preceding quarter.
This ranking improvement was already in place -
before the company announced details of its new tier 1 SSD storage in September
- and affirms my view that when enterprise SSD readers see a product or company
they like the sound of they want to learn more.
When I spoke to
Violin's CEO a few weeks ago - the question of the top SSD companies list did
arise (as it often does when I talk to SSD companies). At the time I
muttered something - like I think you're still doing OK - whereas in fact I
had been seeing searches about the company and its products at the top end of
my analytics screens for a few months - as well as getting frequent questions
about them from VCs and investors.
Congratulations to Violin on
making such a successful come back. (Although there's still a steep hill
to climb to the #1 slot - which got 84% more searches than Violin. Violin
itself got 9% more than the #3 ranked SSD company.)
Violin Memory
was the 1st company to focus on the very high performance
PCIe connected SSD
market (in 2007)
and has appeared from time to time in the
fastest SSDs lists.
For
a few years (2009 and 2010) the company appeared to lose momentum and
focus. When I spoke to
Violin's CEO Don Basile in November 2010 - I said they looked like a
company which had gone back into stealth mode. They are in effect a new company
with new funding ($75 million in the 1st half of 2011) but still marketing the
same technology base products - which due to their holistic design have
very high capacity and performance for their package footprint. Violin says it's
on course to reach $100 million revenue this year.
Where does
Violin stand relative to my SSD architecture models?
They are
legacy (rather
than new dynasty and
big (rather
than small) SSD architecture.
Alternatives to Violin Memory?
For
competing products in this category see the
fastest SSDs and
rackmount SSD
directories.
Other makers of tier 1 FC SAN SSD storage (with hot
replaceable modules) include:-
Kaminario - whose
product line includes MLC and RAM SSD options - and
Huawei Symantec - whose
SLC only product line has lower performance but also lower cost.
Other
makers of FC SAN SSDs which, however, require application dependent
configuration to support failover configurations include:-
Texas Memory Systems
and Solid Access
Technologies.
Many other FC SAN SSD systems appear to overlap with
Violin's product range - but don't in reality compete for the same application
slots. These include auto-tiering
SSDs / ASAPs from Dataram
and GridIron Systems.
And yet another category of similar sounding - but functionally
different - network SSDs is a class of
bulk storage SSDs (with
internal compression and dedupe) from companies like
Nimble Storage and
WhipTail Technologies.
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In August 2007 -
Violin Memory launched
the world's fastest 2U SSD - the
Violin 1010.
In
August 2008 -
Violin Memory said it
had delivered 1 million IOPS on a single interface port (a world record)
using the latest version of its RAM based Violin 1010 memory appliance.
In
November 2008 - Violin
Memory announced availability of a new model - a fast 4TB SLC flash
SSD in a 2U rackmount. Its patent pending non blocking architecture delivers
the best ratio of flash R/W IOPS in the industry - over 200K random Read IOPS
and 100K random Write IOPS (4K block). Interface options include:-
PCIe, Fibre
Channel and Ethernet.
In September 2009 -
Violin Memory announced
that Donald Basile has been named CEO. Dr. Basile (with over 20 years of
leadership experience) had recently served as the CEO of
Fusion-io.
In
March 2010 - FalconStor
announced
technical
and VAR channel support for Violin Memory's 2U
rackmount FC flash SSD
- the Violin 1010 .
Although the headline specs of this very fast flash SSD are substantially the
same as when it was launched in
November 2008
the 2 important things which have changed are:-
- the availability of SSD
ASAP-like features implemented by FalconStor's SafeCache and HotZone
software.
In April 2010 -
Violin Memory announced
it had
received
a significant investment from
Toshiba.
In May
2010 - Violin Memory
announced a
strategic
partnership with Landmark
Ventures a technology-focused strategic advisory and
investment-banking
firm. No details were given but there have been several signs in the past year
that Violin is restructuring itself to better cope with the competitive and
growth demands of the
rackmount SSD
market. For example - earlier in this month Violin announced the
appointment
of former Cisco VP Larry Lang to its board.
In June 2010
- Violin Memory
announced
it has acquired the technology assets of of
Gear6.
In September
2010 - Violin Memory
announced
availability of the
Violin
3140 - a 3U MLC SSD with 40TB capacity
priced at under $16
per GB and $3 per
IOPS.
In
November 2010 - Violin
Memory (which makes
rackmount SSDs)
unveiled a
multi-terabyte
SSD cache solution for NAS
systems which use NFS. Violin says its
vCACHE expands to
15TB of useable cache and delivers over 300,000 NFS operations per second over
8x 10GbE ports.
Editor's comments:- I spoke to
Don
Basile, CEO of Violin Memory, and
Matt
Barletta a few days ago to get a current view of how the company sees
itself, competitors and the SSD market. ...click here to read the
interview
In January 2011 -
Violin Memory re-entered
the top 10 in the 15th quarterly edition of the
Top SSD companies.
In
February 2011 - Violin
Memory
announced
a $35 Million Series B funding round which includes
Toshiba - a strategic
investor since April 2010.
In June 2011 -
Violin Memory
announced
a $40 Million Series C funding round.
In July 2011 -
Violin Memory anoounced
it had been named
"company
of the year" by AlwaysOn.
In
September 2011 - Violin
Memory
announced
new models and options in its range of fast
iSCSI /
FC SAN rackmount SSDs.
The new
6000
series - designed for high availability applications with no single point
of failure and hot swappable "everything" - provides 12TB SLC, or
22TB MLC usable capacity with 200/600 microseconds mixed latency, 1 million /
500K sustained RAIDed spike free write IOPS, in 3U rackspace at a list price
around $37K / $20K per terabyte.
In October 2011 -
Violin Memory achieved
its highest ever ranking in StorageSearch.com's 18th quarterly list of the Top
SSD Companies. Violin was #2 - based on search volume which tracked over
350,000 online SSD readers in the 3rd quarter of 2011. |
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| World's 1st PCIe rackmount
SSD |
In August 2007 -
Violin launched the
world's fastest 2U SSD.
This was the 1st time that a
PCIe connected
rackmount SSD
had been featured on StorageSearch.com.
Earlier SSDs with a claim to
ultra speed fame had included
FC,
SAS or
InfiniBand
interfaces.
There were 2 things which stood out when this product was
launched.
1 - the high density (compared to other
RAM SSD products), and
2 - Violin's promise to follow up with a later flash SSD model with
the same interface and form factor. That promise was made good in
November 2008 -
when the company announced a 4TB SLC flash 2U model with over 200K random Read
IOPS and 100K random Write IOPS (4K blocks). | | |
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| Violin
video re advantages of home grown controllers |
Editor:- January 23, 2012 - I commented recently
that the top 10 SSD
companies in Q4 2011 all had one thing in common (apart from the fact they
make SSDs) - they all had their own proprietary
SSD controller
architecture which they could use to optimize products for some application
markets (even if some of them also used other controllers too).
In
a
recent
video - Violin's,
CTO Software Jonathan Goldick
talks about the benefits they get from having their own controller.
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| Violin unveils
naked cost advantages in reliable SSD arrays |
Editor:- September 27, 2011 -
Violin Memory
today announced new models and options in its range of fast
iSCSI /
FC SAN rackmount SSDs.
The new
6000
series - designed for
high availability
applications with no single point of failure and hot swappable "everything"
- provides 12TB SLC, or 22TB MLC usable capacity with 200/600 microseconds
mixed latency, 1 million / 500K sustained RAIDed spike free write IOPS, in 3U
rackspace at a list price around $37K / $20K per terabyte.
For less
demanding applications (but still featuring hot swap memory modules) the
company has also extended its lower priced
3000 series
to 16TB SLC usable capacity.
Editor's comments:- when I spoke
to Violin's CEO -
Don
Basile about the new 6000 series he was curious about how I would tell
you what's unique about this product and signal whether it's relevant to you or
not.
I said - when it comes to reliability -
you've either got it - or you haven't - and there aren't too many enterprise
SSD systems which have hot-swap everything. That's one of the reasons the
latency looks slow - compared to many other fast SSDs - because the figures
quoted here include the latency of the internal factory built protection
schemes.
Another angle - I said is your product is an example of
"big SSD
architecture". When I explained what I meant - Don agreed and said
what it means for the customer is
lower price.
Because when you look at the raw capacity that's lost to over-provisioning
and RAID like protection
and get down to the usable capacity that the customer sees in an MLC rack - say
- then Violin's 6000 delivers about 70% of the raw capacity - versus nearer to
30% in an array of 2.5"
SSDs for example. That confers a 2 to 1 native cost and density
(SSD TB/U) advantage.
I said Violin's density looks good too - compared
say to Kaminario's K2.
I
also said - that our SSD readers would recognize what was meant by "spike-free"
IOPS - because of various
past articles
about this - and because another enterprise flash vendor -
Virident Systems -
had made that one of the
differences they
talk about compared to some other flash
PCIe SSD companies. I
knew that in Violin's case that was due to their patented non-blocking write
architecture - which was explained to me when their
first flash
products came to market in 2008.
Don said - that inside their
protection array they're actually doing 5x more IOPS than the customer
is seeing outside the box and on the datasheet - and that helps too.
I
also asked about price - and where they were relative to $30K / TB - which is
the ballpark for this type of product - and you can see where Violin are above.
That's a competitive figure for a no SPOF SSD.
I said that for people
who are serious about enterprise SSDs it's relatively easy to decide what
products you may want to focus in on after just seeing a couple of simple
metrics.
Don did also mention a comparative write up - about their
SSD versus another so called "tier 1" storage solution - from
EMC. Violin think it
makes them look pretty good - but I can't understand why anyone cares how they
stack up to EMC - who never understood the SSD plot - which is why their (at
one time) prime SSD supplier
STEC has had a bumpy
revenue stream in recent years.
I had one final question for Don -
which wasn't about Violin's new SSD - but about
something
which had come to my attention while I was googling the company just before
our conversation. |
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When can we expect to see a
picture of a naked man featured on a
Vmem
poster ad? - I asked.
He laughed and indicated it wouldn't be
anytime soon. | | | |
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| an off the
wall advertising strategy for enterprise SSDs |
Most of the SSD
industry thought leaders I speak to are agreed about one thing - even though
they may
disagree about almost
everything else - and that's the need to improve industry-wide
understanding about
the architecture and technical issues related to getting the best results from
enterprise SSDs. Without a better level of SSD education - user adoption won't
grow as fast as it could - because if users can't rationally compare different
options they are being offered - they won't understand the risks and benefits
and will proceed more cautiously.
Imangine my surprise then at seeing
an
article
in Businessweek (September 2011) which shows that Violin Memory
has been using sem-naked women protrayed on posters in airports as the way it's
going to invest in getting more mindshare and attention in the market of
enterprise decision makers. This demonstrates to me that the company feels ithas
money it can afford to burn and doesn't care too much about offending some
people.
If you're an investor in Violin then it means that instead of
educating customers your funds are being siphoned into poster art and graphics
design. If you're a potential customer - you will come away with the impression
that the product would cost you a lot less if you weren't funding this null
content branding scheme for their graphics design and ad agency. My view is -
that Violin's competitors will be the biggest winners from this activity -
because any company which wastes resources in such marketing activities and
directly alienates potential customers with a soft porn pitch for an
enterprise SSD product deserves a reality check- no matter how good its
underlying technology. | | |
| ... |
| the Problem with
Write IOPS in flash SSDs |
the "play it again Sam"
syndrome
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 an
order of magnitude more than SLC? (let alone
MLC) - even
when the IOPS specs look similar. |
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This article 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 | | | |
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