An interesting article in E-Week published this week.
Sourced from Violin Memory: CTO and co-founder Jon Bennett and Vice President of Corporate Development Scott Metzger, the article discusses without branding, many of the issues facing Customers when looking to integrate the performance of a flash solution into their existing SAN and application environment.
To expand on this a little, I'd like to talk about some of the transference of what are legitimate concerns about SSD solutions when compared to Violin Memory's offerings. First thing to remember that Violin is not SSD!
Myth1: Flash is too expensive
Myth Busted: Violin-Memory capacity arrays deliver a cost-per-TB similar to T1 Enterprise class storage, at a significantly lower cost-per-IOP - For example, compare 1600 IOPS per TB of T1 Enterprise 15k RPM disk against the Violin Memory v6232 array at 27,000 IOPS/TB - and that's the slow stuff!
Myth2: Flash is unreliable
Myth Busted:The enterprise class flash devices from Violin-Memory include extensive data-reliability ECC systems as well as multiple layers or redundancy down to the chip level. The means that with a Violin-Memory array we can deliver a media error rate of 1.00E-18 which compared to enterprise FC disk is two orders of magnitude greater than Enterprise FC RAID5 disk at 1.00E-16. All of the Violin-Memory solutions have full replacement warranty of worn out VIMMs - no Fair use policy like SSD!
Myth3: SSD write performance is no better than disk
Myth Busted: This is the case for SSD, but Violin Memory is not SSD - Violin-Memory arrays are 3rd Generation Flash arrays built on an architecture specifically designed to handle the challenges that flash storage poses. So unlike standard arrays with SSD shoehorned into enclosures designed for spinning disk, with controllers managing disk style queues and IO patterns, Violin-Memory arrays are able to handle very high write IO loads without a performance hit (otherwise known as the write cliff) meaning that, in the case of the v6616 that all 1,000,000IOPS are deliverable under 100% write conditions for the life of the array
Myth4: Flash density is much smaller than disk
Myth Busted:The Violin memory arrays are able to deliver better than T1 density with 22Tb in 3u at 500,000 IOPS. Performance and capacity scale linearly with every 3u shelf meaning that a single rack can contain 308Tb and deliver 7,000,000 sustanined aggregate IOPS
With violin memory we are able to provide a genuine replacement to T1 storage with associated cost-savings in OpEx and CapEx to deliver a better experience to your customers and clients.