Solid State Drives and High-speed Memory Report and Survey – Table of Contents

Solid State Drives and High-Speed Memory: Adoption, Practice and Deployment

An Outlook Report from Storage Strategies NOW

September 20, 2011

By James E. Bagley and Deni Connor

Sponsors. 6

Introduction. 7

Market. 8

Market size. 8

Projections – Flash Memory Revenues to Foundry Owners. 8

Projections – Enterprise SSDs – Revenues to SSD Manufacturer. 9

Projections – Average end-user selling price per GB.. 9

IT Professionals Survey. 10

Enterprise SSDs. 14

Consumer SSD Use. 29

Application Use Cases. 31

• Transaction processing. 31
• Virtual Desktop Infrastructure. 31
• Acceleration into the Cloud. 32

Technology. 33

• NAND Flash Memory: SLC, MLC, eMLC. 33
• SLC vs MLC. 33
• DRAM.. 34
• Phase Change Memory. 34
• Other future memory technologies. 34

Interfaces. 35

• Parallel versus Serial 35
• SCSI. 35
• ATA.. 35
• SATA.. 36
• SAS. 36
• Fibre Channel 36
• InfiniBand. 36
• Other interfaces. 37

Implementation. 38

• Controller. 38
• PCI Express. 38
• Hard Disk Drive Form Factor. 38
• Appliance/Array. 39

Deployment issues. 40

• Over-provisioning. 40
• Wear-leveling. 40
• Write endurance. 41
• Write amplification. 41
• IOPs – Read/write performance. 42
• Latency. 43

Caching and tier management software. 44

• Dell/Compellent: Data Progression. 44
• EMC: FAST. 44
• Flashsoft. 45
• HP: Adaptive Optimization and Automatic Tiering. 47
• IBM: EasyTier. 47
• IO Turbine (now Fusion-io). 49
• LSI CacheCade and Adaptec MaxIQ.. 50

Best practices and recommendations.51

• Understand the Input-Output bottlenecks. 51
• Understand the technologies. 51
• Don’t use a consumer-class device in an enterprise application. 51
• Go for the low-hanging fruit. 52
• Negotiate, negotiate, negotiate. 52
• Don’t forget operating expenses. 52

Use Case Profiles. 53

• Customer Name: Digital Trowel 53

Vendor and Product Profiles. 54

• Adaptec (Now PMC-Sierra). 55
• Anobit. 55
• Avere Systems. 55
• Coraid. 55
• DataDirect Networks. 56
• Dataram.. 57
• Dell Compellent. 57
• Dell/EqualLogic. 58
• Dolphin. 58
• EMC. 59
• EMC/Isilon. 61
• Falconstor. 61
• Flashsoft. 62
• Fujitsu (now Toshiba). 63
• Fusion-io. 63
• Hitachi GST. 63
• Hynix. 64
• Intel 64
• Imation. 65
• LSI. 68
• Micron. 70
• MOSAID Technologies. 71
• NetApp. 71
• Nexsan. 72
• NextIO.. 72
• Nimble Storage. 73
• Nimbus Data. 74
• NVelo. 74
• OCZ Technology. 74
• Pillar Data (Now Oracle). 76
• Pliant Technology. 77
• Riverbed. 77
• Samsung. 77
• SanDisk. 77
• Sandforce. 80
• Seagate. 80
• Smart Modular. 81
• Solid Access Technologies. 82
• SolidFire. 82
• Soligen. 83
• STEC. 83
• SuperTalent. 85
• Texas Memory Systems. 85
• Toshiba. 86
• Viking Modular. 87
• Violin Memory. 89
• Virident. 89
• Whiptail Technologies. 89
• Xiotech. 90

Performance Testing Standards. 92

Performance Testing Services. 94

• Calypso Systems. 94
• Medusa Labs Division of JDSU.. 94
• Oakgate Technology. 94

Tables: Solid State Drives. 95

Tables: Appliances/Arrays. 100

Tables: PCIe and RAID implementations. 109

Tables: SSD Tiering Software. 113

This report and survey is available for $7,500. To order the report or to find out more about it, contact info@ssg-now.com