Violin Claims to Pull the Curtain Down on Disk Arrays

Grazed from Sys Con Media.  Author: Maureen O’Gara.
 

Comparing itself to kryptonite, Violin Memory thinks it’s got the stuff in hand to put an end to classic mechanical storage arrays in the data center.

The disk arrays would be replaced by Violin’s built-from-the-ground-up 6000 Series NAND flash Memory Arrays, which it calls the industry’s first all-silicon storage systems…

They’re supposed to have the reliability, performance and economics to be deployed as mission-critical primary storage. The 6000’s "Rack in a Box" skills extend to virtualization, private and public clouds, and Big Data initiatives.

The company says its approach to flash aggregation created a completely hot swappable platform that accelerates all business-critical applications, allowing them to be virtualized and deployed in private clouds.

Violin’s hardware and software, based on its own IP, are tightly integrated. Redundant Memory Gateways, which virtualize the flash resources and manage network connectivity, are integrated in the chassis and remove the need for an external device to connect to the network. All components are redundant and there is no single point of failure in the system.

Data on the Violin Integrated Memory Modules (VIMMs) is protected by hardware-based flash vRAID. Block or chip failures are handled on-the-fly and in the event of a VIMM failure, data is moved to a spare and the VIMM can be hot-swapped.

The widgetry, which comes in a 3U SAN-attached platform, promises an 80% reduction in cost per input/output operations per second (IOPS) and a 15:1 reduction in physical consolidation of hardware from a disk array vendor.

Deploying Tier 1 Memory Arrays is supposed to lead to extensive server compression and software license savings.

Violin can put more than 160TBs in a rack with 10 million IOPS and 40GB/s performance.

It claims one of its racks can replace 40 racks of EMC’s latest Tier 1 Symmetrix disk arrays, which need 9,600 disks to do the same job. It figures its users usually sees a 2x-3x reduction in both capex and opex.

Violin’s 6000 models are available based on either Single Level Cell (SLC) or Multi Level Cell (MLC) flash technology. Systems based on SLC are optimized for performance, supporting 16TBs per array and delivering one million raided IOPS with low latency. Systems based on MLC are optimized for capacity and support 32TBs per array and deliver 500,000 raided IOPS.

Violin’s unique patent-pending vRAID hardware-based approach is said to result in the fastest MLC Memory Array on the market. Multiple Memory Arrays can be clustered together scaling to petabytes of storage and tens of millions of IOPS.

Violin has also doubled the storage capacity of its 3200 Series to 20TB per 3U shelf with a new Violin 3220. It’s supposed to be good for 250,000 IOPS.

The 3220 is available now and the new 6000 series arrays are currently shipping to strategic partners in limited quantities with general availability set for Q1.

The widgetry supports Fibre Channel, Gigabit Ethernet and PCIe.

Violin’s flash comes from Toshiba, its largest investor. Juniper Network is also a backer as is a mystery OEM that may be IBM.

The six-year-old company, which is focused on the Global 5000, claims AOL, Revlon, Tagged.com, Oracle, Juniper and HP as customers. HP is putting together a Violin-based OLTP appliance like Oracle’s Exadata. Violin and IBM are working on joint sales.

CEO Don Basile, an émigré from Fusion-io where he was also CEO, expects Violin to IPO, like Fusion-io did, in Q1 or Q2 of next year if market conditions are favorable. Basile, however, remarks that the bad economy is working well for Violin. Customers are more cost-conscious. It helps that his widgetry plugs into existing fabrics.

Violin recently brought in close to $100 million in equity financing with $500 million in debt financing. Its revenues are reportedly about $100 million – or will be this year – and it only put its first product on the market 14 months ago, scoring a faster growth rate than 3Par or Isilon. It expects to double its 200-odd workforce by Christmas.