SSD launch pad for Fusion-io in the UK

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Solid state drive (SSD) NAND flash memory based technology will consolidate several racks of servers and its components into one storage device, according to an announcement today.

The ioDrive and ioDrive Duo storage architectures are the starting blocks for US company Fusion-io to make its move into the UK market with partners Diamond Point.

It can be put into a server’s existing PCIe bus for Intel x86 platform and supports Windows and Linux 64 bit technology.

Mathew Fleming, director of international sales for Fusion-io, said: “In a normal rack of servers, data is copied from nine to 14 times from the disk to the user, taking 100 milliseconds. It may not seem much to you or me but if thousands of people are using this it adds up.”

“We thought why do we need to copy data so much? Instead we should put the data into the arteries of the server cutting latency from 100 milliseconds to 50 microseconds.”

By increasing this speed, Fleming claimed it will save time - which in turn saves you money. He cited an example of a video editor using one of these devices cutting his editing time from five hours to 30 minutes, although he would not state which company.

Fleming also promoted the green IT aspects of the products. He said: “In today’s economy, saving money in IT is a challenge, but the power saving costs on this are outstanding.”

The bold claim that he made was that one of these drives could use 1/2,000th of the power of high performance disk arrays. When comparing power per 100,000 input/output per second (IOPS), a 7,200 RPM disk drive would use up 354,055 kilowatts per year. The ioDrive claims to only use 67.

The technology used on the two products focuses on putting high capacity onto a high density component, in this case NAND flash. Instead of using a disk controller, which Fleming sees as the “Achilles heel” to NAND, it uses its own IP controller.

The ioDrive comes in 80GB, 160GB and 320GB with the duo doubling these to 160GB, 320GB and 640GB. The company also revealed that it is planning on releasing a 1.2TB version later this year.

The smaller of the drives use single level cell (SLC) NAND, which increases read and write speed but the write speed drops on larger models as it has to use multi level cell (MLC) NAND as the capacity increases.

Prices start at $4,000 (£2,618) and the products are available immediately.

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