IBM FlashSystem

IBM, of course, offers a lot of different forms of flash. The new IBM DS8880 family includes hybrid configurations that can include SSDs or High Performance Flash Enclosures (HPFE). The IBM Storwize family also offers all-flash and mixed SSD/HDD configurations. And the IBM FlashSystem family is all-flash storage using IBM MicroLatency modules instead of SSDs for mixed cloud and analytics workloads.

“When enterprises must have the highest levels of data storage performance, cost-efficiency, reliability, and comprehensive virtualization features, they turn to IBM FlashSystem,” said Eric Herzog, vice president, product marketing and management, IBM Storage Systems and Software Defined Infrastructure.

Its FlashCore technology is said to enable integration of high density multi-level cell (MLC) flash chips by leveraging flash management techniques that provide businesses with all the cost advantages of MLC while maintaining system resiliency. Data protection comes from variable stripe RAID at the individual module level, plus system-wide RAID.

Diablo Memory1

Diablo Memory1 from Diablo Technologies is said to be the only product with the density and economics of NAND flash to be used as system memory. It allows for up to 256 GB of system memory per DIMM at up to 70 percent reduction in total cost of ownership. This allows more application data in memory to relieve the storage subsystem.

FormationOne

FormationOne by Formation Data Systems is software-defined storage designed to tier data dynamically while offering QoS to take advantage of multiple types of HDD and solid state storage that are set up in compute storage nodes.

Reduxio HX550

The HX550 is said to combine performance with high capacity. It also has instant recovery to any precise second in the past, thin virtual writeable clones, the ability to mark specific timestamps for future recovery, and cross-volume backdating to the same timestamp.

Unitrends Recovery Series

Unitrends includes SSDs within its Recovery Series physical backup appliances (models 1U and higher). These appliances use SSDs as a second layer read cache. As more backup data is processed, data is cached in the SSD, speeding up read requests and increasing data I/O and thus addressing the challenges of growing data amounts and shrinking backup windows. The result is said to be a 300 percent improvement in backup performance and a 125 percent improvement in recovery times.

EMC

Like IBM, EMC offers a wide range of flash products. Its dedicated all-flash array is called XtremIO, while its hybrid arrays are the VMAX3 and VNX. It is said to offer sub-millisecond latencies and linear scale-out performance with in-line data services and in-memory copy services. VMAX and VNX hybrid arrays can also be deployed in all-flash configurations, but provide intelligent tiering known as FAST. This results in the right performance at the right blended price economics for given workloads.

Zadara Storage

Zadara Storage provides 800GB SSD and HDDs at a low price point as a cloud service. The user can configure the mix of drives, and the pricing automatically updates as they add or decrease. As an as-a-service offering, the user can change the capacity, mix of drive types and or controller performance at any time.

Nimble Adaptive Flash

Nimble Storage’s Adaptive Flash platform is a hybrid product that can deliver an all-flash service level for applications with the highest performance requirements and disk-only service for applications requiring low-cost capacity. These service levels can be changed as workload demands fluctuate.

Nimble offers a storage platform that brings IT organizations the full benefits of storage consolidation, including lower costs, higher IT productivity, seamless growth and reduced risk, all without compromising service levels of applications and workloads. It also comes with software-based encryption and can scale to over 3.5 PBs of capacity and over 160 TBs of flash per cluster.