Storage specialist Fusion-io Wednesday said it has doubled the capacity of its ioDrive Octal PCIe flash module, giving customers the ability to pack up to 20 TB of flash-based acceleration into a 1U server.
Fusion-io (NYSE:FIO) introduced its new 10 TB ioDrive Octal at the SC11 supercomputing trade show in Seattle, noting that it features double the ioMemory capacity and density of its previous offering and integrates eight 1.28 TB MLC ioMemory modules in a single double-wise PCIe device.
“The 10 TB ioDrive Octal packs increased raw flash capacity in a server, enabling customers to accelerate even very large data sets with an intelligent and efficient ioMemory solution,” said David Flynn, chairman and chief executive officer of Fusion-io. “Previously, a 4U server could contain 10 ioDrive Duos for 20 TB of total capacity, but now up to four 10 TB ioDrive Octals can be integrated into a 4U server, such as the HP ProLiant DL585 G7, delivering 40 TB of total capacity. We believe that with the 10 TB ioDrive Octal, even highly data-intensive organizations can house increased amounts of data directly within the server to simultaneously accelerate their business and the efficiency of their data center.”
Fusion-io’s technology is founded upon the idea of data decentralization, which consists of improving the processing capabilities within a datacenter by moving “active” data from centralized storage to the server where it is being processed.
The new flash module is powered by Fusion-io’s Virtual Storage Layer (VSL) software platform and the company said it is designed to accelerate read-heavy workloads, making it ideal for data warehousing, scale-out architectures, research and supercomputing. At the same time, the company said it’s lightweight footprint means customers can significantly reduce power consumption and costly rack space while controlling datacenter sprawl.
The company introduced its VSL solid-state storage software stack in 2010. It’s a flash-based subsystem intended to accelerate enterprise-class operating systems by virtualizing NAND flash arrays, combining key elements of the I/O subsystem and the virtual memory subsystem. It acts as a native memory module and uses direct memory access and low-level physical addressing to communicate with I/O memory.
Fusion-io said the 10 TB ioDrive Octal features more than 1.3 million IOPS with 6.7 GB/s bandwidth and the ability to process multiple terabytes of data in the fraction of the time of previous flash modules. The company said it is also capable of more work per unit of processing due to Fusion’s cut-through architecture, which delivers performance increases as CPUs become more powerful.
To make it even more appealing to value-added resellers (VARs) and Technology Alliance Program members, Fusion-io has given the 10 TB ioDrive Octal similar capacity to many memory arrays. This will allow VARs and Technology Alliance Program members the ability to build customized Fusion Powered appliances.
The company said the 10 TB ioDrive Octal will be available in the first quarter of 2012.