Xiotech Hybrid ISE delivers 60,000 IOPs per unit at $7.00 per Gigabyte
By James E. Bagley
Over the past two years when we would ask the Xiotech team about their solid state drive (SSD) strategy, the answer was consistently that SSDs were ok for client side use but were not ready for prime-time, enterprise applications. Against this background, and the superior performance and reliability of Xiotech’s ISE architecture, we knew that when Xiotech finally released a hybrid array that combines the speed of solid state drives (SSD) with 10K RPM Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) hard drives, the results would be spectacular.
Last year Xiotech released a series of hardware platform enhancements with its ISE 2.0. This included the use of the Intel Jasper Forest processor and replacing the Fibre Channel drive backplane with a 6Gb/sec. SAS interface. Host SAN interface was bumped to eight 8Gb/sec. Fibre Channel ports, which means a good sized server array can be attached without the addition of costly Fibre Channel switches. DRAM has been increased to 8GB and the addition of super-capacitors replaces the need for batteries to protect the DRAM cache in case of a power failure. These platform improvements paved the way for Xiotech’s first foray into a hybrid storage array.
Each Hybrid ISE node consists of a 3U unit with a total of 14.4GB of useable storage. This is made up of 20 100GB MLC SSDs and 20 900GB 10K RPM SAS HDD’s. All drives are 2.5” format. Smart Modular is the SSD manufacturer, using the new SandForce 2000 series enterprise flash controllers and a SATA-SAS bridge. This provides an extremely compact storage footprint that supports all of the self-healing reliability that the Xiotech ISE system is known to represent.
As impressive as the hardware platform is, the real secret to the Hybrid ISE performance and reliability is due to the advanced software that provides automatic, adaptive placement of data in the appropriate media, be it cache, SSD or HDD. The result is far more than an intelligent caching system. The Continuous Adaptive Data Placement feature analyzes IO-heavy blocks and places the read-intensive data in the SSD while maintaining rapid intake speeds. The system creates an IO history database and even allows this history to be “played back” in order to prepare an ISE after installation or when redeployed to a different set of storage application requirements. For example, an Exchange Server application will have a different signature than a SQL Server or ERP application. Xiotech has always been known for its advanced storage management and reporting capabilities, and these are further enhanced in Hybrid ISE.
So what about performance? Each Hybrid ISE will deliver in excess of 60,000 IOPs ( an SPC benchmark publication is in process). A single rack can linearly scale to nearly 900,000 IOPs. And at a cost of about $7.00 per useable GB, it is small wonder that the initial uptake into Xiotech’s loyal customer base has been phenomenal, with ½ of the first quarter’s production already shipped.
Technology Marketing 101: What to say when the software engineers miss the launch date?
Purchase now, upgrade later!
By James E. Bagley, senior analyst
Storage strategies NOW
Software-based features usually don’t match general availability of the hardware that runs them. The reason is quite simple. In most cases, final software testing can’t happen until the hardware is completely revved up. And the most advanced features often need those final tweaks at the hardware level for proofing. When faced with delaying an entire product introduction (often heavily pre-hyped) versus releasing the hardware and promising a free or low-cost upgrade on the advanced software feature, many organizations will opt for the latter, however fraught with peril.
Peril comes from two sides. The first side is the automatic overhang of the hardware revenue. Customers can often defer the hardware investment until all of the software features are available, reducing their risk and near term capital outlays. The second side of the peril is if, in the final round of testing, some kind of hardware non-starter is discovered that requires a hardware replacement to make that software feature work. Man, I’ve been there before.
Even if the best plans work out, software upgrades are not free, even if there is no cost from the vendor. Doing brain surgery on modern equipment has its own set of risks. Minimally, the product needs to be taken out of service at some point in the process. Maximally, an engineer needs to walk through a tedious process that can produce disaster by a single error while the data center manager sweats and fumes.
As hardware manufacturers increasingly rely on sophistication in operating software for product differentiation, this dilemma will haunt more and more product developers and marketers. The worst cases are when the feature delay has not been planned into the launch cycle, causing the product marketing team to invent ‘benefits,’ often associated with reduced margins, for a buy the hardware now and add the software features at a later date. Since this is a fact of life, and most companies will opt for near term hardware revenue and market share, this modern equivalent of ‘damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead’ is likely to be the norm.
