With Help From Fusion-io, Facebook’s Data Centers Are Going All Flash

With Help From Fusion-io, Facebook’s Data Centers Are Going All Flash

Today, Fusion announced that its latest product, Fusion ioScale, which has been available to existing customers like Facebook for a while, is now generally available to new customers as well. The implications for data centers aren’t trivial. I talked with CEO David Flynn about this last week and he summed it up to me simply: Data centers are going all flash. Hard drives are on their way out. Get used to it.

VM World Update: Fusion-io in the Wikibon Cube

Woz had this to say about my colleague John Walker

John was the best operations person I ever knew or imagined. He had tight control over his focus no matter how tough the job. When things get busy, John remains even and calm and in control. He is the sort of person I would want to work with or for. He had high integrity and would never distort the truth or significance of his work. As an aside, he accomplished amazing things that were critical to Fusion-io’s success.” June 15, 2012

Steve Wozniak, Chief Scientist, Fusion-io
worked with John W. at Fusion-io

The EMC World 2012 session catalog is here!

260 Sessions and only 1 exclusively dedicated to integrating FLASH???

I guess that kinda says it all…

Motley Fool: Is Fusion-io the Perfect Stock? (spoiler alert: No — there’s OCZ among others)

…Fusion-io’s products are designed more for the high end, with a massive 10-terabyte drive that is several orders of magnitude faster to access than standard drives. For now, that gives Fusion-io a huge competitive edge over Western Digital and Seagate (Nasdaq: STX  ) — at least for the highest-end applications. The company counts Facebook as its biggest customer.

But competition will be fierce going forward. Western Digital and Seagate have gotten into solid-state drives and have seen some promise, and peer OCZ Technology (Nasdaq: OCZ  ) saw a similarly impressive jump in revenue in its most recent quarter. EMC (NYSE: EMC  ) has also recently announced its new VFCache technology, using flash chips to accelerate performance.

(full post here:  http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2012/02/22/is-fusion-io-the-perfect-stock.aspx)

The Bleak Future of NAND Flash Memory?

Newly published research purports to claim that as NAND flash dies get smaller (as they inevitably will) there is a predictable drop in reliability and an increase in latency to the point of a diminishing return that “makes the future of SSDs couldy.”

According to one source:  the researchers chose 45 chips from 6 manufacturers.  They did not use specialized NAND flash controllers as are used by SSD vendors such as Intel, OCZ or Fusion-io. Instead their results were baseline and considered “optimistic” because they didn’t include latency added through error correction or garbage collection algorithms.

Really?  No controller & no error correction & no garbage collection?  That’s like putting a racing car on the track and forgetting the tires — results will be poor.  Here is the entire paper:

http://cseweb.ucsd.edu/users/swanson/papers/FAST2012BleakFlash.pdf

 

Zebi Storage Array Features De-Duplication, Compression, and Thin Provisioning

The latest entrant in the flash appliance war is the Zebi Storage Array from Tegile.  The marketing engine at Tegile is on steroids — according to their website, we can expect the following:

5X the Performance

Through the deep integration of SSD and caching technologies, Tegile systems deliver five times the performance of legacy arrays. These performance gains are recognized by applications even when their data ultimately lands on hard disk drives. High IOPS and low latency for everyone.

Up to 75% Less Capacity

In-line compression and de-duplication are used on SSD and hard disk drive media throughout the array. This allows customers to significantly reduce their acquisition and operational cost of storage. All application data is reduced – not just secondary applications, and not in a post-process manner.

NAS and SAN From the Same Array

Enjoy the flexibility of choice in how your storage is connected to your servers. Fibre Channel and iSCSI block protocols are supported, while both NFS and CIFS file protocols are available for NAS environments. No more silos of storage in your data center.

Built in Business Continuity

Integrated snapshot and remote replication functionality shrink backup windows down to next to nothing and eliminates the need for backup software. Our thin replication feature only transmits changed data to reduce the burden on the WAN as well, saving even more.

Storage Simplified

Tegile’s arrays are dramatically easier to manage than legacy systems. Application optimized templates accelerate the provisioning process and implement best practices in a single mouse click. Backup and replication are built in – no complex back-end software to manage. Best yet – all of our software is included in a single license.

and the best part of all is the price, of course.  Learn more here:  http://www.tegile.com/products/zebi-storage-arrays/

 

DCIG REPOST: Interview with Fusion-io CMO Rick White Part I

Terrific update by Jerome Wendt from DCIG featuring Rick White, Fusion-io founder and chief marketing officer.

Link to DCIG or read it here:

By Jerome M. Wendt on February 10, 2012 5:00 AM |

This past Monday EMC created a fair amount of buzz in the storage industry with its VFCache announcement that in essence validates the emergence of server-based flash technology in the enterprise. But does EMC VFCache go far enough? Fusion-io, who arguably invented this space, argues, “Definitely not!” In this first of a multi-part interview series with Fusion-io’s Chief Marketing Officer, Rick White, we talk about server-based flash technology and why it is poised to change enterprise data centers.

(go to DCIG for the full interview  –  see link above)

Geisinger Says EMC Sold 24 Petabytes of Flash in 201: but wait…there’s more!

“Fusion-io CEO David Flynn said to me in an interview today that his company sold 50 petabytes of flash last year. He said Fusion-io sold much of that Flash to the enterprise market, EMC’s customer base and scale out Web companies and cloud services.”

Silicon Angle Repost (CLICK HERE)

This is why Fusion-io snapped at the chance to grab Woody Hutsell from TMS…

and why everyone else is trying to catch up…

Woody’s recent blog repost on the FIO website is stunning and tells the growth story in the VM world.  There is nothing like this anywhere else technology-wise.  EMC’s lightning has nothing on Fusion-io.

See it here:  http://www.fusionio.com/blog/why-server-side-caching-rocks/