Server-side Flash and SSD has delivered significant storage I/O performance benefits to physical and virtualized host environments. While SSD provides many benefits, it is not without its drawbacks. By adding another device into a PCIe slot, for example, SSD resources must compete for the same I/O channel as other devices like network interface cards. The next step in the Flash evolutionary chain, therefore, is to remove points of contention on board the server bus to drive higher levels of throughput and performance.
Diablo Technologies, with their years of experience developing Memory Channel Storage (MCS) technologies, has developed a solution that allows DIMM form factor Flash modules to approximate the same performance and throughput as onboard system memory or RAM. When paired with cache acceleration technologies like SanDisk’s guardian software, Diablo’s MCS technology can build a highly parallel I/O architecture which eliminates the points of contention that are common in PCIe and drive form factor SSD environments.
In addition to providing 2-4 GB/s throughput speeds, Diablo’s offering may enable multi-tenant environments to achieve denser virtual machine to host ratios while enabling data center planners to utilize more compact blade server architectures; thus lowering costs and driving a higher ROI on virtual infrastructure investments.
In the following chalk talk video, Storage Switzerland had Diablo Technologies sketch out how their solution works and how it can provide a measurable performance impact to data center environments.
For a high level overview of ULLtraDIMM please see this video with SanDisk:
George Crump is the Chief Marketing Officer at VergeIO, the leader in Ultraconverged Infrastructure. Prior to VergeIO he was Chief Product Strategist at StorONE. Before assuming roles with innovative technology vendors, George spent almost 14 years as the founder and lead analyst at Storage Switzerland. In his spare time, he continues to write blogs on Storage Switzerland to educate IT professionals on all aspects of data center storage. He is the primary contributor to Storage Switzerland and is a heavily sought-after public speaker. With over 30 years of experience designing storage solutions for data centers across the US, he has seen the birth of such technologies as RAID, NAS, SAN, Virtualization, Cloud, and Enterprise Flash. Before founding Storage Switzerland, he was CTO at one of the nation's largest storage integrators, where he was in charge of technology testing, integration, and product selection.
StorageSwiss.com - The Home of Storage Switzerland 