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/

Can Fusion-IO Outrun The Tiger? (repost)

There is a saying that goes, “you don’t have to be faster than the tiger, you just have to be faster than your slowest friend.” That may be a constructive way of thinking about Fusion-IO (NYSE:FIO) today. There’s no question that this is a high-growth tech stock with a huge multiple and huge expectations, but that has never stopped those tech stocks that can deliver the goods. (For more, seeEarning Forecasts: A Primer.)

Big Data 2.0
In some respects, what Fusion-IO seeks to do is relatively simple. In the same way that solid-state drives (SSD) have offered consumers considerably better performance than hard disk drives, Fusion-IO is trying to bring the advantages of flash/SSD memory to the enterprise data market.

Fusion-IO sells a two-part solution. The hardware consists of products like to ioDrive, a collection of flash cards (ioMemory) containing an array of NAND flash chips and an FPGA. These attach literally to the process server (through PCI Express) and can dramatically increase the throughput rates as a result.

There is also a software component, with the Virtual Storage Layer (VSL) software arguably the most important part. This is host driver software that manages the interface between the ioDrive and the operating system. Fusion-IO also has the directCache product that allows Fusion-IO’s products to work in virtualized systems like those created byVMware (NYSE:VMW).

Why Bother?
So why is Fusion-IO doing this? Don’t EMC (NYSE:EMC), NetAppliance (Nasdaq:NTAP) and International Business Machine (NYSE:IBM) already handle the storage needs for Big Data? Yes and no. There are certainly ample virtues to the approach used by EMC (and the others), particularly when it concerns large amounts of data.

The problem, though, is that these aren’t always especially fast systems – there’s something of a “request and go fetch” aspect to it. What Fusion-IO offers is a solution that is much faster (and ultimately cheaper) when speed is of the essence. It’s not yet economical to create an entirely flash-based storage network, but it can make sense for smaller pieces of time-sensitive data.

Early Days
It’s not fair to say that Fusion-IO is a solution in search of a market, but it is fair to say that this is a small early-stage opportunity. Some analysts believe that this will be a $5 billion addressable market in 2015 – by way of comparison, EMC has logged over $19 billion in revenue in its past twelve months. That said, don’t confuse “small today” with “small forever.” Just as hard drives replaced tape-based drives years ago, SSD is going to continue to grow as the costs come down.

Competitors and Buyers
Fusion-IO has a head-start on the competition, but that won’t last very long. First, there is a risk that the VSL software becomes a commoditized product over the next couple of years. More to the point, companies like EMC, NetApp, STEC (Nasdaq:STEC) and LSI (NYSE:LSI) have this market opportunity in their sights. EMC’s Project Lightning should ship in 2012 and while not so much is known about the hardware component, EMC does already have very good storage management software.

Looking more broadly, a host of other companies could potentially get into this market. Chip companies like Marvel Technology (Nasdaq:MRVL), SanDisk (Nasdaq:SNDK), Intel (Nasdaq:INTC) and Samsung arguably have the hardware wherewithal, but need to find a way to implement the software side – something that could get easier if VSL does become a commodity.

There’s also a good chance that Fusion-IO goes into the buyout rumor mill. OEM partners IBM and Hewlett-Packard (NYSE:HPQ) could certainly use this company to enliven the growth prospects of their storage businesses, while EMC has never been shy about pulling out its wallet to cover gaps in its own technology.

The Bottom Line
There’s no point in talking about valuation on a stock like Fusion-IO; sell side analysts will assign grotesque multiples to sales or earnings three years hence, but the reality is that it’s nearly impossible to model growth stories like this correctly. Trading at about nine times trailing sales, Fusion-IO is already in the neighborhood of pure software plays like VMware and ahead of other growth hardware names like F5 Network (Nasdaq:FFIV) or Mellanox (Nasdaq:MLNX).

None of this means that the stock can’t work – the reality of growth tech investing is that multiples seldom stand in the way of further appreciation if the growth is there. It’s a consummate case of “buy high and hope to sell higher.” So long as investors understand the risks that go with that sort of investing, and the inevitability of some “hiccups” along the way that lead to occasional sharppullbacks, it isn’t such a bad aggressive play. (For additional reading, check out 5 Must-Have Metrics For Value Investors.)

Use the Investopedia Stock Simulator to trade the stocks mentioned in this stock analysis, risk free!

At the time of writing, Stephen D. Simpson did not own shares in any of the companies mentioned in this article.

By Stephen D. Simpson, CFA

 

Read more: 
http://stocks.investopedia.com/stock-analysis/2012/Can-Fusion-IO-Outrun-The-Tiger-FIO-EMC-IBM-VMW0117.aspx#ixzz1jqpYngsv

What’s going on at Virident?

Virident Repost of 3-year old Gartner Report?

Last night Virident posted a tweet with a 3-year old Gartner report about the dangers of going sole source.  Obviously they believe that Fusion-io is the “sole source” of danger.  I think Virident fails to realize that OCZ/Marvell has snuck up on them and perhaps overtaken them — at least on the sales/marketing front.

Once thought of as the natural competition to Fusion-io, Virident took down a really nice C round of financing in November 2011 but has not been heard of since except for a few job postings and the occasional tweet.

The message “We’re better than Fusion-io” seems to be what Virident is all about these days.

First it was John Cagle…then Woody Hutsell…now Shane Robison

I was just thinking about all the little camp fires that are now burning around Fusion-io.  Whether it’s the obvious competition from Virident or OCZ/Marvell or STEC or the less obvious and longer sales cycles of appliance vendors like Violin Memory or even attempts to update legacy storage with flash from EMC or NetApp.

And then I was looking at TOPSY results for Fusion-io.  If you are not aware of TOPSY go there right now — a very cool tweet search engine.  And I noticed a very long list of career opens at Fusion-io:  see the sample below.

Anyway, about those campfires — they are having the oxygen sucked out of them by some very clever folks at Fusion-io who are hiring just about everyone and anyone in the flash space.

Moral of the Story:  if you want to be relevant in flash — you need to be recruited into Fusion-io (at least for now).

Department	Position Title	City	State
Sales	Account Executive – Atlanta	Atlanta	GA
Sales – APAC	Account Executive – Beijing	Beijing
Reliability/Tools	NVM Technologist	Boulder	CO
Reliability/Tools	HA Applications Engineer	Boulder	CO
Sales	OEM Systems Engineer	Raleigh	NC
Sales	Account Executive – Carolinas	Raleigh	NC
Sales	OEM Systems Engineer	Round Rock	TX
Sales	Renewal Manager	Salt Lake City	UT
Software Engineering	Software Engineer	Salt Lake City	UT
Software Engineering	Test Automation Engineer	Salt Lake City	UT
Hardware Engineering	Senior Software Engineer	Salt Lake City	UT
Reliability/Tools	Solid State Storage Tech	Salt Lake City	UT
Reliability/Tools	Engineering Technician	Salt Lake City	UT
Finance	Accounting Manager	Salt Lake City	UT
Finance	Accounts Receivable Manager	Salt Lake City	UT
HR	Recruiting Business Partner	Salt Lake City	UT
Software Engineering	Student Intern	Salt Lake City, UT or Boulder, CO
Software Engineering	Engineering Program Manager	Salt Lake City, UT or Boulder, CO
Software Engineering	Applications Team Manager	Salt Lake City, UT or San Jose, CA
Software Engineering	Senior Software Engineer	Salt Lake City, UT or San Jose, CA
Reliability/Tools	Software Engineer Lead	Salt Lake City, UT or San Jose, CA
Operations	Manufacturing Engineer	Salt Lake City, UT or San Jose, CA
Software Engineering	Senior Build Engineer	Salt Lake City, UT; San Jose, CA; Boulder, CO
Software Engineering	Software Engineer	Salt Lake City, UT; San Jose, CA; Boulder, CO
Software Engineering	Software Engineer	Salt Lake City, UT; San Jose, CA; Boulder, CO
Software Engineering	Software Engineer	Salt Lake City, UT; San Jose, CA; Boulder, CO
Software Engineering	Software Engineer	Salt Lake City, UT; San Jose, CA; Boulder, CO
Software Engineering	Software Engineer	Salt Lake City, UT; San Jose, CA; Boulder, CO
Software Engineering	Software Engineer	Salt Lake City, UT; San Jose, CA; Boulder, CO
Hardware Engineering	Software Engineer	Salt Lake City, UT; San Jose, CA; Boulder, CO
Reliability/Tools	Senior Software Engineer	Salt Lake City, UT; San Jose, CA; Boulder, CO
Sales	Systems Engineer Manager, West	San Jose	CA
Sales	OEM Systems Engineer	San Jose	CA
Software Engineering	Technical Manager of Platform Team	San Jose	CA
Software Engineering	Senior Software Engineer	San Jose	CA
Software Engineering	SAN Protocols and Windows Engineer	San Jose	CA
Software Engineering	Senior SQA Engineer	San Jose	CA
Software Engineering	Performance Engineer	San Jose	CA
Software Engineering	SQA Engineer	San Jose	CA
Software Engineering	SQA Engineer	San Jose	CA
Software Engineering	Virtualization Engineer	San Jose	CA
Finance	Sales Commissions Manager	San Jose	CA
Finance	Finance Manager	San Jose	CA
Virtualization Solutions	Senior Software Engineer	San Jose	CA
Virtualization Solutions	Kernel Engineer	San Jose	CA
Virtualization Solutions	QA Lead	San Jose	CA
Virtualization Solutions	Systems Software Engineer	San Jose	CA
Virtualization Solutions	Kernel Engineer	San Jose	CA
Virtualization Solutions	Senior Software Engineer	San Jose	CA
Sales – APAC	Sales Engineer – Shanghai	Shanghai
Sales – APAC	Account Executive – South China	South China
Sales	Account Executive – FED Civilian	Washington DC	DC

SSDs choked by crummy disk interfaces: NVMe and SCSI Express Explained

This is the complete repost of Chris Mellior’s terrific article from last week:

Gotta be PCIe and not SAS or SATA

By Chris Mellor • Get more from this author

Posted in Storage, 7th December 2011 15:43 GMT

Free whitepaper – VMready

A flash device that can put out 100,000 IOPS shouldn’t be crippled by a disk interface geared to dealing with the 200 or so IOPS delivered by individual slow hard disk drives.

Disk drives suffer from the wait before the read head is positioned over the target track; 11msecs for a random read and 13msecs for a random write on Seagate’s 750GB Momentus. Solid state drives (SSDS) do not suffer from the lag, and PCIe flash cards from vendors such as Fusion-io have showed how fast NAND storage can be when directly connected to servers, meaning 350,000 and more IOPS from its ioDrive 2 products.

Generation 3 PCIe delivers 1GB/sec per lane, with a 4-lane (x4) gen 3 PCIe interface shipping 4GB/sec.

You cannot hook an SSD directly to such a PCIe bus with any standard interface.

You can hook up virtually any disk drive to an external USB interface or an internal SAS otr ATA one and the host computer’s O/S will have standard drivers that can deal with it. Ditto for an SSD using these interfaces, but the SSD is sluggardly. To operate at full speed and so deliver data fast and help keep a multi-core CPU busy, it needs an interface to a server’s PCIe bus that is direct and not mediated through a disk drive gateway.

What could go wrong with this rosy outlook? Plenty; this is IT. There is, of course, a competing standards initiative called SCSI Express.

If you could hook an SSD directly to the PCIe bus you could dispense with an intervening HBA that requires power, and slows down the SSD through a few microseconds added latency and a hard disk drive-connectivity based design.

There are two efforts to produce standards for this interface: the NVMe and the SCSI Express initiatives.

NVMe

NVMe, standing for Non-Volatile Memory express, is a standard-based initiative by some 80 companies to develop a common interface. An NVMHCI (Non-Volatile Memory Host Controller Interface) work group is directed by a multi-member Promoter Group of companies – formed in June 2011 – which includes Cisco, Dell, EMC, IDT, Intel, NetApp, and Oracle. Permanent seats in this group are held by these seven vendors, with six other seats held by elected representatives from amongst the other work group member companies.

It appears that HP is not an NVMe member, and most if not all NVMe supporters are not SCSI Express supporters.

The work group released a v1.0 specification in March this years, and details can be obtained at the NVM Express website.

A white paper on that site says:

The standard includes the register programming interface, command set, and feature set definition. This enables standard drivers to be written for each OS and enables interoperability between implementations that shortens OEM qualification cycles. …The interface provides an optimised command issue and completion path. It includes support for parallel operation by supporting up to 64K command queues within an I/O Queue. Additionally, support has been added for many Enterprise capabilities like end-to-end data protection (compatible with T10 DIF and DIX standards), enhanced error reporting, and virtualisation.

The standard has recommendations for client and enterprise systems, which is useful as it means it will embrace the spectrum from notebook to enterprise server. The specification can support up to 64,000 I/O queues with up to 64,000 commands per queue. It’s multi-core CPU in scope and each processor core can implement its own queue. There will also be a means of supporting legacy interfaces, meaning SAS and SATA, somehow.

A blog on the NVMe website discusses how the ideal is to have a SSD with a flash controller chip, a system-on-chip (SoC) that includes the NVMe functionality.

What looks likely to happen is that, with comparatively broad support across the industry, SoC suppliers will deliver NVMe SoCS, O/S suppliers will deliver drivers for NVMe-compliant SSDs devices, and then server, desktop and notebook suppliers will deliver systems with NVMe-connected flash storage, possibly in 2013.

What could go wrong with this rosy outlook?

Plenty; this is IT. There is, of course, a competing standards initiative called SCSI Express.

SCSI Express

SCSI Express uses the SCSI protocol to have SCSI targets and initiators talk to each other across a PCIe connection; very roughly it’s NVMe with added SCSI. HP is a visible supporter of it, with there being SCSI Express booth at its HP Discover event in Vienna, and support at the event from Fusion-io.

Fusion said its “preview demonstration showcases ioMemory connected with a 2U HP ProLiant DL380 G7 server via SCSI Express … [It] uses the same ioMemory and VSL technology as the recently announced Fusion ioDrive2 products, demonstrating the possibility of extending Fusion’s Virtual Storage Layer (VSL) software capabilities to a new form factor to enable accelerated application performance and enterprise-class reliability.”

The SCSI Express standard “includes a SCSI Command set optimised for solid-state technologies … [and] delivers enterprise attributes and reliability with a Universal Drive Connector that offers utmost flexibility and device interoperability, including SAS, SATA and SCSI Express. The Universal Drive Connector also preserves legacy investments and enables support for emerging storage memory devices.”

An SNIA document states:

Currently ongoing in the T10 (www.t10.org) committee is the development of SCSI over PCIe (SOP), an effort to standardise the SCSI protocol across a PCIe physical interface. SOP will support two queuing interfaces – NVMe and PQI (PCIe Queuing Interface).

PQI is said to be fast and lightweight. There are proprietary SCSI-over-PCIe products available from PMC, LSI, Marvell and HP but SCSI Express is said to be, like PQI, open.

The support of the NVMe queuing interface suggests that SCSI EXpress and NVMe might be able to come together, which would be a good thing and prevent the industry working on separate SSD PCIe-interfacing SoCs and operating system drivers.

Of course this imagining could be just us blowing smoke up our own ass.

There is no SCSI Express website but HP Discover in Vienna last month revealed a fair amount about SCSI express, which is described in a Nigel Poulton blog.

He says that a 2.5-inch SSD will slot into a 2.5-inch bay on the front of a server, for example, and that “[t]he [solid state] drive will mate with a specially designed, but industry standard, interface that will talk a specially designed, but again industry standard, protocol (the protocol enhances the SCSI command set for SSD) with standard drivers that will ship with future versions of major Operating Systems like Windows, Linux and ESXi”.

HP SCSI Express card from HP Discover at Vienna

Fusion-io 2.5-inch, SCSI Express-supporting SSDs plugged into the top two ports in the card pictured above. Poulton says these ports are SFF 8639 ones. The other six ports appear to be SAS ports.

A podcast on HP social media guy Calvin Zito’s blog has two HP staffers at Vienna talking about SCSI Express.

SCSI Express productisation

SCSI Express productisation, according to HP, should occur around the end of 2012. We are encouraged (listen to podcast above) to think of HP servers with flash DAS formed from SCSI Express-connected SSDs, but also storage arrays, such as HP’s P4000, being built from ProLiant servers with SCSI Express-connected SSDs inside them.

This seems odd as the P4000 is an iSCSI shared SAN array, and why would you want to get data at PCIe speeds from the SSDs inside to its X86 controller/server, and then ship them across a slow iSCSI link to other servers running the apps that need the data?

It only makes sense to me if the P4000 is running the apps needing the data as well, if the P4000 and app-running servers are collapsed or converged into a single (servers + P4000) system. Imagine HP’s P10000 (3PAR) and X9000 (Ibrix) arrays doing the same thing: its Converged Infrastructure ideas seem quite exciting in terms of getting apps to run faster. Of course this imagining could be just us blowing smoke up our own ass.

El Reg’s takeaway from all this is that NVMe is almost a certainty because of the weight and breadth of its backing across the industry. We think it highly likely that HP will productise SCSI Express, with support from Fusion-io and that, unless there is a SCSI Express/NVMe convergence effort, we’re quite likely to face a brief period of interface wars before one or the other becomes dominant.

Concerning SCSI Express and NVMe differences, EMC engineer Amnon Izhar said: “On the physical layer both will be the same. NVMe and [SCSI Express] will be different transport/driver implementations,” implying that convergence could well happen, given sufficient will.

Our gut feeling is that PCIe interface convergence is unlikely, as HP is quite capable of going its own way; witness the FATA disks of recent years and also its individual and admirably obdurate flag-waving over Itanium. ®