What’s going on at STEC?

Some serious discord:  http://ssdblog12.wordpress.com/2012/02/

FIO Institutions and Funds Hold 50% of Float

Here’s the table direct from YAHOO:

Top Institutional Holders
Holder	Shares	% Out
FMR LLC	3,690,000	4.42
TCW GROUP, INC. (THE)	3,681,292	4.41
NEA Management Company, LLC	25,935,930	31.1
GILDER, GAGNON, HOWE & CO.	1,740,931	2.09
Capital Research Global Investors	970,189	1.16
LORD ABBETT & CO	937,364	1.12
Valinor Management, LLC	750,000	0.9
THORNBURG INVESTMENT MANAGEMENT INC.	636,816	0.76
JAT Capital Management, L.P.	589,800	0.71
EAGLE ASSET MANAGEMENT, INC.	559,887	0.67
		47.34
Top Mutual Fund Holders
Holder	Shares	% Out
FIDELITY GROWTH COMPANY FUND	2,586,756	3.1
TCW SMALL CAP GROWTH FUND	744,451	0.89
THORNBURG CORE GROWTH FUND	630,700	0.76
LORD ABBETT DEVELOPING GROWTH FUND	397,549	0.48
Allianz Fds-RCM Technology Fd	316,110	0.38
Eagle Series Tr-Eagle Small Cap Growth Fund	305,360	0.37
FIDELITY OTC PORTFOLIO	298,124	0.36
FIDELITY CANADIAN GROWTH COMPANY FUND	264,590	0.32
FIDELITY ADVISOR GROWTH OPPORTUNITIES FUND	207,800	0.25
JP MORGAN SMALL CAP GROWTH FUND	199,330	0.24
		7.15

As a comparison, OCZ is at 81% and STEC is at 87%.  The reason is simply there are not enough shares of FIO to go around.  That will change next month when an additional release of shares comes online and institutions can purchase without triggering SEC-required reporting

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

Looks For Large Gains From Solid State Drives Storage Wars

(Seeking Alpha Repost)

As cloud computing (data centers), smartphones, and tablets continue stratospheric growth rates, the market needs faster, more reliable, and less power-hungry storage options. The digital junk has to be stored somewhere, and these new devices don’t have the storage capabilities of traditional desktop computers loaded with large hard disk drives.

Enter the SSDs, or Solid State Drives (read The SSD Revolution for a good overview of the sector) which provides a better alternative than traditional hard drives, though at a higher cost.

Between analysts raising estimates for Fusion-IO (FIO) and OCZ Technology (OCZ) upping estimates for Q4, the sector has startling growth potential for 2012. Numbers that caught me by surprise.

Fusion-IO is seen as the industry leader and innovator. Not only is the company a recent IPO darling, but Steve Wozniak, co-founder of Apple (AAPL), is the chief scientist, giving the company the instant street credibility that helps with customers and stock valuations.

The company sells plug-in boards that accelerate access to corporate server computers such as those needed in cloud computing operations.

Analysts from Credit Suisse and Morgan Stanley recently upped the estimates for Fusion-IO, even suggesting that new revenue from current and pipeline accounts could double the CY12 revenue estimate of $372M:

Fusion-io is well-positioned to ride the surge in enterprise flash given its leading market share, recent low-cost product introduction (ioDrive2), and growing partnerships / distribution, in our view. Our $30 price target applies an 8x EV/Sales multiple, upper-end of comparable data center peers, to our CY12 revenue estimate of $372M. We believe our estimates are conservative, especially if FIO converts new accounts in its pipeline that have the potential to be multimillion customers. We believe conversion of new revenue in current and pipeline accounts could at least double our CY12 revenue estimate.

Fusion-IO has impressive gross margins in the 50%+ level. The company though trades at lofty multiples. The forward PE clocks in around 70 and the Price/Sales multiple is over 9. The stock is definitely expensive, but if growth accelerates as the analysts think might be possible the stock will end up being cheap. One major caution is that prime customer Facebook could at any point leave it without a major revenue stream.

OCZ Technology is the opposite of Fusion-IO. The company has been around for 10 years and just recently made a move into SSDs. Hence the company remains relatively unknown, even though the revenue growth has been nothing short of spectacular.

Back in December, OCZ guided to higher revenue numbers that amount to 30% sequential increase from Q2 2012 — amounts that exceed those of Fusion-IO by a wide margin. The total fiscal 2012 revenue will now exceed the previously announced top end of $350M. That’s impressive growth for a company that just entered the space a little over a year ago.

The company only trades at roughly 1x those fiscal year 2012 estimates, a far cry from the valuations of Fusion-IO. The one catch with OCZ Tech is that gross margins remain low at just above 21%. Is OCZ undercutting competition by selling their products at low margins? Typically the technology companies that thrive are the ones selling products for premium prices. Once your product becomes a commodity, the stock never makes the high returns desired by investors.

OCZ trades at a very reasonable 12x forward earnings. Any upside to those numbers could result in serious gains for the stock. Investors should focus on whether gross margins move towards the 30%+ range.

Preliminary Highlights

• OCZ expects revenue for Q3’12 between $100 and $105 million, an increase of approximately 90% compared with the revenue of $53.2 million reported in Q3’11, and an increase of approximately 30% compared with the $78.5 million reported in Q2’12.
• OCZ now expects revenue for its fiscal year 2012, ending February 29, 2012, to be in excess of the top end of its previously announced range of $320 to $350 million; this does not take into consideration any potential increase in demand for the company’s products arising from the widely reported hard disk drive shortage.
• “We expect to report record revenue in Q3’12, driven primarily by increased traction for our enterprise and server SSD offerings along with initial shipments of our new PCIe-based offerings,” said Ryan Petersen, CEO of OCZ Technology. “Based on the exit bookings rates from November, interest in these products is exceeding our expectations, due to accelerated adoption of our SSDs by server OEMs and enterprise customers,” he added.

Though listed by some as a market leader in the enterprise flash storage sector, STEC (STEC) appears to be the laggard these days. Not only did the stock plunge back in July when it was revealed that the SEC may recommend a civil injunction against the company, but earnings estimates for Q4’11 and 2012 were lowered dramatically. The 1-2 punch led to a 50% drop in the stock and no ensuing recovery has taken place though the sector is gaining steam. STEC remains a show me stock that should be avoided for now.

The analyst predictions on Fusion-IO and the continued guidance raises by OCZ Technology suggest that investors should take a further look at this sector. The combination of being a cloud computing storage option and fast growth could provide the catalyst for large stock gains.

Disclosure: I have no positions in any stocks mentioned, but may initiate a long position in OCZ over the next 72 hours.

Additional disclosure: Please consult your financial advisor before making any investment decisions.

Fusion-io ioDrive2: FIRST LOOK for THE REGISTER

Fusion-io deploys PCIe flash toaster

Self-healing powers claimed if you play the magic card

By Chris Mellor • Get more from this author

Posted in Storage, 4th October 2011 10:13 GMT

Free whitepaper – Fluid data architecture pays off for CMA

Fusion-io has refreshed the whole of its ioDrive product range with smaller flash chip dies and new controller firmware to produce high performance, longer lasting flash using less silicon.

CEO David Flynn said the current ioDrive technology was introduced four years ago and Fusion was now “introducing something that will toast it. This thing is a beast”.

The ioDrives are PCIe-connected cards in half-length format and use NAND chips that are either single-level cell (SLC) or 2-bit multi-level cell (MLC) and require a 29nm to 20nm process (2Xnm). We think this is Samsung NAND using a 27nm process. There’s a half-height ioDrive and a full-height ioDrive Duo to choose from.

The 2Xnm NAND is inherently slower than 3Xnm dies, but Fusion says its controller technology, including its firmware, more than compensates for this.

Flynn says Fusion can use the cheapest commodity 2Xnm dies and give it performance and endurance such that second-generation ioDrives out-perform first-generation products. There’s no need, he says, to use enterprise-grade MLC (eMLC).

ioDrive 2

There is a new card design with the flash mounted on up to three daughter cards attached to the base card.

The ioDrive 2 comes in SLC form with capacities of 400GB and 600GB. It can deliver 450,000 write IOPS working with 512-byte data blocks and 350,000 read IOPS. These are whopping great increases, 3.3 times faster for the write IOPS number, over the original ioDrive SLC model which did 135,000 write IOPS and 140,000 read IOPS. It delivered sequential data at 750-770MB/sec whereas the next-gen product does it at 1.5GB/sec, around two times faster.

There is an MLC version of the ioDrive 2 which comes in 365GB, 785GB and 1.2TB capacity points.

The SLC version of the larger format ioDrive 2 Duo has a 1.2TB capacity point and the MLC version 2.4TB.

ioDrive 2 Duo

How fast?

The SLC version of the ioDrive 2 Duo can deliver 900,000 write IOPS and 700,000 read IOPS, at 3GB/sec. The first-generation product did 262,000 and 261,000 respectively, at 1.5GB/sec reading and 1.1GB/sec writing speeds.

Flash product suppliers generally quote IOPS numbers using 4KB data blacks whereas Fusion typically uses 512B blocks. A 4KB block size aligns with flash’s 4KB page size but 512B blocks require a read, modify, write process. This is not necessary with Fusion-io’s products, according to Flynn.

We have one set of 4KB block IOPS numbers from Fusion: the 1.2TB, SLC ioDrive 2 Duo does 503,000 read IOPS with 4KB blocks and 664,000 write IOPS.

Flynn emphasises that the performance comes at low queue depth. Typically, he says, performance is quoted by suppliers with a high queue depth so that the parallelism in a product’s controllers can really get the data moving. But real world experience is lower queue depths, because flash responds so quickly. Here Fusion’s products speed along while competing ones, typically comprised of, he says, RAID controllers, SandForce controllers, and flash dies, start limping.

He also asserts that Fusion’s products perform very well with mixed read/write workloads, whereas other products show a bathtub effect: high numbers for pure reads and writes but much lower ones for mixed workloads.

A Fusion spokesperson said: “The cards are only now going through performance tuning. In addition, we expect Intel’s new Sandy Bridge processors to have a major beneficial impact since our design is built to leverage system processor improvements.”

Better availability

Flynn said that MLC flash products makes up about 80 per cent of Fusion’s business. It actually started shipping 2Xnm-class dies some months ago on the ioDrive Octal product, a custom product generally sold direct to large customers; where 3Xnm devices could hold 5.12TB of data, 2Xnm-class kit now stores up to 10TB.

It self-heals to the point where it covers for subsequent failures ad infinitum. We don’t believe that customers should have to service anything.

The first-generation product had N+1 redundancy at the chip level. Flynn said that the next-gen product is self-healing. Its Adaptive FlashBack technology provides full chip level fault tolerance, which enables an ioDrive to repair itself after a single chip or a multi chip failure without interrupting business continuity. The repair process takes about an hour: “It self-heals to the point where it covers for subsequent failures ad infinitum. We don’t believe that customers should have to service anything.”

This idea that customers should not have to replace modules reminds us of XIO’s Hyper ISE, that sealed canister of drives with a 5-year warranty against customers ever needing an engineer to poke around inside it and replace failed components.

Flynn said Fusion-io has added endurance extending technologies to the ioDrive 2 products. There are no published endurance numbers, though we expect, given Fusion’s OEM customers, that endurance is good. Flynn said that the endurance has increased with the ioDrive 2 products.

Fusion’s competition

There are several competitors who have been waiting for this Fusion refresh: Micron, OCZ, STEC, TMS and Virident are the main ones. They use a 4KB block size for their IOPS numbers.

All we can compare are raw numbers, and hope the numbers are divergent enough to indicate meaningful relationships, even though it’s an apples and oranges comparison, apart from the 4KB numbers for the ioDrive 2 Duo SLC product.

Micron’s rocket-like P320h, a 3Xnm SLC product, does 750,000 read IOPS and 341,00 write IOPS, with 3GB/sec read and 2GB/sec write bandwidths. The read IOPS are significantly higher that the 503,000 of Fusion’s ioDrive 2 Duo SLC but significantly slower than the Fusion product’s 4KB write IOPS. With 512B blocks, the Fusion product is almost twice as fast on write IOPS though, while being a mere 50,000 IOPS slower on reads and overall faster on bandwidth. The medal goes to Fusion overall then.

Fusion-io’s ioDrive Octal

OCZ’s VeloDrive PCIe numbers are simply incomprehensible: for example, read IOPS are expressed in MB/sec for hardware RAID, while software RAID speed is quoted for compressible and incompressible data. We give up. Give the dratted thing a test drive alongside the Fusion product to make a comparison in your own shop.

“This thing is a beast”

STEC’s Kronos BiTurbo PCIe SSA holds up to 3.9TB of MLC and, in SLC form, does 440,000 read IOPS, 400,000 write IOPS and boasts a 4GB/sec bandwidth. The Kronos Turbo on its own does 220,000 read IOPS, 200,000 write IOPS and shifts 2GB/sec. Fusion has that one whipped it seems, apart from the bandwidth number.

TMS’ RamSan-70, based on 3Xnm Toshiba SLC NAND, does 330,000 read IOPS, 600,000 in burst mode, and 400,000 write IOPS to heave 2GB/sec. On the raw number basis Fusion has it beat as well. We note that a CSCS analysis had this TMS product way-outperform a first-generation ioDrive product from Fusion though.

Virident’s SLC TachION delivers a claimed (see CSCS analysis above) 300,000 IOPS with a mixed read/write workload and a peak 1.4GB/sec bandwidth. Fusion appears to have it whipped too.

The verdict

The verdict is pretty clear. On headline raw numbers Fusion-io’s ioDrive 2 products generally leave the competition in the dust, except for Micron, but the P320h is let down by poor write IOPS numbers.

Of course all these PCIe cards won’t compete in a uniform PCIe market; it being split up into various sectors each with their own workload and price/performance characteristics.

Fusion is hoping that, with its wide spread of capacity points and performance levels, it can compete in as many of these sectors as possible, while focussing on mainstream pure enterprise business and not the flash web businesses. Its mainstream enterprise customers buy kit from Dell, HP and IBM and look for that level of reliability, performance, value and support.

Our first reaction is that, with this launch, Fusion-io has, in El Reg’s opinion, cemented its position as the PCIe flash card leader.

All the products will ship in November. Prices start from $5,950. ®

Wikibon Gets Fusion-io

http://www.linkedin.com/share?viewLink=&sid=s541110152&url=http%3A%2F%2Flnkd%2Ein%2F9sxScg&urlhash=uNA4&pk=member-home&pp=11&poster=3075276&uid=5511420438263115776&trk=NUS_UNIU_SHARE-title

My colleagues David Floyer and John Furrier are attending the Flash Memory Summit this week.  A glance at the Web site and the exhibitor’s list for the event reminds me of the good old disk drive days back when there were many dozens of active manufacturers worldwide. The market was exciting with tons of VC money pouring in and plenty of innovation to move the market forward. It was hyper-competitive.

At the time, much of the activity was at the device level but as EMC showed, the real money to be made was by developing system level function and specifically combining hardware and software to deliver new types of business value to enterprise customers.

I see a similar dynamic occurring in the fast moving flash market these days. The list of companies attending this week’s event is long with many names that are not household words by any stretch of the imagination. One that stood out to me was Fusion-io. Not because it’s on the list, but because it is a bronze sponsor (the lowest level) and has little asterisk next to its name signifying the company is sponsoring but not exhibiting.

STEC on the other hand is a platinum sponsor, has a nice big booth by the entrance and has a banner ad on the event site.  So why is this of interest? Because I suspect Fusion-io isn’t really that interested in the Flash Memory Summit and is there just to see what developments are happening in the ecosystem. For STEC and the other big sponsors, however this is their “Superbowl” of sorts.

While I’m stretching this analogy, Fusion-io and STEC are kind of like EMC and Seagate. For example, EMC used to attend the big drive company events (e.g. Comdex) to catch the scuttlebutt and see what was happening. Meanwhile Seagate would rent out most of a downtown hotel and throw lavish parties for its customers at the event. They were/are both storage companies but their businesses were quite different. They don’t compete for the same customers and have completely different business models.

I find that many observers are looking at flash and thinking that because all flash is faster than super slow spinning disk that any flash will speed up application performance and hence any company selling flash must be the same. In other words, people are looking at the $2B+ valuation of Fusion-io and thinking that everyone doing flash is going to grab a piece of that pie.

Not So Fast Sparky

More specifically, the world has finally caught on that PCIe is a better way to connect to the host than using slow disk controller technologies across a network. Now there are other connection methods that are emerging (e.g. Infiniband) but judging from all the PCIe announcements lately it’s pretty clear the world is buying into Fusion-io’s connectivity approach. Twenty-four months ago there was some debate about this but now it’s pretty much accepted. What we’re seeing in the market is many observers looking at all the PCIe-based flash solutions and concluding they’re just like Fusion-io.

Here’s why they’re wrong. Fusion-io’s advantage has little to do with PCIe and everything to do with software, specifically its Virtual Storage Layer (VSL) technology. This is why, in addition to its hyper-growth and killer customers, the company in my mind can justify a $2B valuation. Wikibon’s David Floyer explains VSL in gory detail in this excellent post. This action item from Floyer says it all:

Application heads and ISVs need to take a long, hard look at Flash on Server architectures and Fusion-io’s VSL implementation. As the cost of flash comes down, the functionality and ease-of-use improvements that can be made to applications will be game changing.

Game changing is an over-used phrase in marketing but in this case I believe it’s justified. What other PCIe flash suppliers are doing for the most part is taking SSDs and off-the-shelf controllers and plugging them into a PCIe bus. There’s nothing wrong with that. Compared to spinning disk it can deliver an order of magnitude performance improvement. But as Floyer’s research note describes, while this approach can deliver high IOPs – similar to Fusion-io, it still uses traditional disk protocols to communicate with the on-board RAID controller. This means these solutions must endure the latency penalties associated with the handshaking of, for example, SCSI.

These PCIe flash solutions use processor offloads which are old school thinking based on the days of Pentium before the age of mega multi-cores.  Said another way, these systems can’t exploit the potential of today’s multi-core processors. Fusion-io’s approach, on the other hand, uses host resources to manage the system. This means the management of the VSL space is cognizant of all the processors at the host level and as such can be optimized for maximum efficiency, thereby eliminating potential bottlenecks. Sure this method uses more CPU cycles (bad in the old days of mainframe disk when processor cycles were expensive and scarce) but CPU capacity in multi-core systems is plentiful. And yes you could use smaller processors but then you wouldn’t get the face-melting application performance that Facebook, Apple and others are experiencing with Fusion-io.

It’s all About Latency

Latency is what drives application performance. And as Facebook has discovered, the user experience is enhanced dramatically when you can deliver two to three orders of magnitude performance improvements.  IOPs is a fun metric but latency is where the rubber hits the road. In standard PCIe architectures, the SAS and SATA protocols and processor offloads introduce application latencies. Think about the solid state disks that have been around since the late 1970’s. Why did they never take off? Not only because they were volatile and expensive but also because they put memory on the “other side of the channel” relegating it to niche use cases.

The Fusion-io approach that Floyer describes puts flash as a much higher capacity (and cheaper) extension to memory, right next to the processor with latency that is similar (somewhat higher) to DRAM. So it’s like the old AS/400 single level store except the pool is flash, not crappy, slow, spinning disk.

The Flash Landscape

Here’s my simplistic interpretation of how the brains in the Wikibon community see the flash space.

There are four levels here.

4. Solid State Disk – it’s mimicking disk drive form factors and function using flash. Nice idea. It reminds me of when IBM introduced its RAMAC disk array (the second time around). It had an old, outdated controller architecture that was running out of gas so it purchased disk “bricks” with cache from Xitel and put them in a subsystem to extend the life. Think of this approach as putting lipstick on a spinning disk pig.

3. Flash as Primary Storage – Now this layer to me is interesting. The idea here is to make an all-flash device (e.g. SolidFire) and target it at primarily block storage from IBM, EMC, HP and also some file apps and deliver consistent quality of service. This is very compelling to cloud service providers who can enable new applications and charge customers for QoS. Very disruptive to the block-based, high-end storage guys. Think of this as Elastic Block Storage for the enterprise.

2. Flash as Cache – This approach helps specific applications and use cases. It’s good for virtualized systems and helps legacy apps run faster (e.g. Oracle databases, Exchange, etc.). Examples include LSI CacheCade, Oracle and IO Turbine (which Fusion-io just purchased). But this is a narrow solution, not designed for tomorrow’s applications. Nice but not game changing.

1. Flash as Memory Extension – This highest layer provides direct memory access and eliminates the latencies not only of spinning disk but also of traditional disk protocols. Unlike Flash as cache there are no cache misses. People often say “so what, if I get a 95% cache hit rate what’s the difference?” Ask Facebook. Ask Apple.  Fusion-io writes are atomic, meaning you only have to do writes once, unlike traditional disk protocols which must endure a litany of signaling and write verification overheads.

FYI – #1 is either PCIe or in theory on the motherboard. #2 is mostly PCIe and #’s 3 and 4 are pretty much standard disk protocols.

So What’s the Big Deal?

Today, only Fusion-io has #1. The company stands alone. It has a huge lead on the competition. Its advantage is in fusing hardware and software to address large data intensive problems. Fusion-io is trying to set the new standard platform for how applications will be developed. Does this mean it will succeed in attracting ISVs and developers? No but if I had to bet I’d say it’s 2-1 odds that the company succeeds beyond anyone’s expectations and there’s a 4-1 chance that Fusion-io becomes an absolutely ridiculous mega home run.

Who else is in the multi-billion dollar race? Not the guys in #’s 2, 3 and 4 above– nice market but not universally game changing across the application spectrum. It’s Intel, Samsung, maybe Oracle, maybe IBM…perhaps Google. And none of these has really given any indication that it’s close to Fusion-io. Whatever Google invents it will keep to itself although it could spawn some new open source movement – who knows. Intel is interesting but if we’re still talking about the future Intel threat to Fusion-io in 18-24 months I’d say it’s too late for Intel to dominate – unless it pulls out the monopoly tactics playbook (but the DoJ is watching closely). The other companies I mentioned are contenders they’re really not even on the track and most will end up as pretenders in this race.

As applications become more and more data intensive there’s no reason that over time, any active data should be on spinning disk. This is good for all the flash players but especially for the guys placing flash as close to the processor as possible and enabling a new class of applications to reach their potential. This is where the big prize will be taken. Viewed another way…what is the future standard by which all SQL, no SQL and high end applications will run? For my money, I’ll back the startup, executed well, just went public, has the secret sauce and the focused mojo horse.

What does India have to say about Fusion-io?

MISSED OPPORTUNITY

In March, research firm Gartner lowered its growth forecast for 2011 PC shipments to 10.5 percent from its earlier view of 15.9 percent, citing the cannibalization of notebooks by tablet devices.

“For the September quarter, we’re forecasting notebook shipments on a global basis to be up only 10 percent sequentially, when historically they grew about 25 percent sequentially,” said Rodman & Renshaw analyst Ashok Kumar.

Not only are tablets using SSDs, but companies like Apple and Hewlett-Packard have started replacing hard disk drives with SSDs in their new laptops.

“The sad part is that traditional HDD vendors had a tremendous opportunity because they had scale (and) original equipment manufacturer relationships, but they missed out,” said Kaushik Roy, analyst at Merriman Capital.

As flash drives become cheaper, more PCs will switch, forcing HDD makers to muscle their way into a market dominated by STEC Inc , Fusion-io Inc and privately-held Violin Memory.

READ MORE HERE:  http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/08/01/diskdrives-idUSL3E7J133420110801?feedType=RSS&feedName=technologySector&rpc=43

 

 

 

Toshiba and others invest $20m in Violin Memory

 

This post discusses recent announcements from Violin Memory and Toshiba and how they relate and compare NAND flash-based solutions to Xiotech’s ISE. 

You can read the press release here:

http://www.violin-memory.com/news/press-releases/violin-memory-enters-into-a-strategic-relationship-with-toshiba/

and the press analysis is here:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/04/01/toshiba-violin/

http://www.storagenewsletter.com/news/business/violin-memory-20-million-of-funding

http://www.businessweek.com/idg/2010-04-01/toshiba-invests-in-enterprise-flash-memory-company.html

What This Means

Coupled with Toshiba’s previously announced 25nm flash, this pulls the Violin 1010 appliance even and perhaps beyond some of the other appliances we are seeing (Schooner comes to mind).  In case you missed it, here is the Toshiba announcement:   http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSSGE6300HS20100402

Today there are three different approaches to adding Tier Zero flash to your enterprise-class data center environment:  purpose-built racked appliance, SATA plug&play drives, PCIe cards.  Yes there are others but these are the devices and systems targeted to enterprise-class users as high performance Tier Zero storage or cache.

Many of my clients are evaluating how NAND flash can be integrated into their environments to improve database performance, oltp and transaction servers, etc.  It’s a crowded field and evaluating the various technologies is a multi-dimensional challenge.  Some of the analytics revolve around acquisition cost, cost per usable terabyte, proposed energy savings, ease of integration, and so on.

My point is that every situation is different — for example, you may have a need for speed notwithstanding cost.  Alternatively, cost may be high on your list of evaluation criteria.   Certainly TCO and ROI need to be factored, understood, and integrated into your evaluation.

Different isn’t better; different is different

Xiotech’s Integrated Storage Element (ISE) is a complete bottom-up redesign of spinning media and is designed to be data-center compatible with virtualization, web 2.0, and scale-out environments.  Many clients are choosing ISE as a complement to or instead of NAND flash-based options.  Here’s why:

ISE incorporates innovative and disruptive thinking around the foundation of storage—the disk drive and its enclosure. With its game-changing design, ISE delivers reliability, performance, and scalability that no other storage system today can match. ISE is an integrated environment of:

• Single or dual sealed DataPacs, each with up to 8 terabytes of capacity—up to 16 terabytes in just 3U of rack space
• Dual Managed Reliability Controllers, which locally manage cache, data recording processes, Dual power and cooling units
• Dual battery modules.

 

Summary

Companies evaluating Tier Zero and Tier 1 storage solutions should be mindful of multi-variable challenges integrating NAND-flash-based solutions in their enterprises.  Xiotech’s ISE offers many of the benefits of high-performance storage coupled with compelling ROI/TCO attributes based on acquisition cost, usable space, and a 5-year warranty which speaks volumes about reliability for continously available environments.

IBM Moves Away from Fusion-io?

From a lengthy post on the YAHOO FINANCE STEC board:

Sorry, his name is spelled Barry Whyte. There are lots of things he’s written or referenced in:

http://news.zdnet.co.uk/hardware/0,10000…

The new release of SVC exchanges the IOdrive for a 2.5-inch serial-attached SCSI (SAS) solid-state drive from Stec, called ZeusIOPS. EMC uses this drive in its Symmetrix storage arrays, which began supporting solid-state drives early last year.

With ZeusIOPS, the controller delivers up to 800,000 operations per second, with response times of about one millisecond, according to IBM. This figure is double the throughput available with the previous version of SVC.

While the Stec solid-state drive’s rate is lower than the one million operations per second achieved with the IOdrive, IBM said it found the ZeusIOPS easier to service.

“There were various reasons for switching from FusionIO to Stec, the most obvious is that a hot-pluggable drive is much easier to service than an internal PCIe adapter,” wrote Barry Whyte, an engineer with IBM’s Hursley-based systems and technology group, in a blog post on Tuesday.

JOB POSTS FROM ENTERPRISE SSD LIST

I was thinking about these firms and wondering which position were being funded — obviously there is a ton of activity for SSD engineering talent right now — take a look:

3Par

Avere

Compellant

Data Direct Networks

DataRam

DolphinICS

Gear6

Schooner Information Technology

Texas Memory Systems

Violin Memory

Some of the firms had no openings or carrer links so I left them off.  The larger firm (SUN, IBM, DELL, HP, NetApp, EMC) require registration so I left them off, as well.
Plus a few others of interest:

• Fusion-io
• STEC
• MICRON