There are many enterprise storage solutions on the market that claim to be the fastest storage array or appliance, be it block, file or unified storage. Everyone from the big players like HP, NetApp and Dell to vendors like Fusion-io and others have arrays geared toward application acceleration, data caching, auto tiering and the like.
There are many enterprise storage solutions on the market that claim to be the fastest storage array or appliance, be it block, file or unified storage. Everyone from the big players like HP, NetApp and Dell to vendors like Fusion-io and others have arrays geared toward application acceleration, data caching, auto tiering and the like. There's even a new breed of storage arrays that are part of the "Cluster in a Box" solutions that aim to deliver compute, storage, interconnect and power management in easy to deploy boxes or pods that are generally geared toward a specific task.
StorageReview isn't content to simply evaluate enterprise storage devices on a one off basis. While those reviews are compelling to a certain audience, the enterprise rarely buys a single PCIe application accelerator for instance, to deploy in an organization. They buy dozens, sometimes hundreds or thousands to execute a well defined task, at times to the point of customizing software for the storage array. The same goes for SATA/SAS flash arrays, tiering/caching boxes and other storage appliances that make use of flash drives.
All-Flash Enterprise Storage Arrays
- Fusion-io ION Data Accelerator – 8 x 3.2TB ioScale with 4 x 16Gb FC
Custom Flash Arrays
While the most popular flash arrays come from the major vendors, the components to make your own are often ubiquitous. Depending on the need, some enterprise users may opt to create their own flash array based on available chassis, drives, system boards, HBAs and interconnects. StorageReview is working with industry partners to create and benchmark such arrays, developing build and deployment white papers for each.
- LSI Nytro WarpDrive WFH8-400 (4x full-height 400GB SLC – unreleased)
- EchoStreams FlacheSAN2 – 48-bay 2.5" 7mm SAS/SATA Flash Array (Data Sheet)
- We're posting over 2 million IOPS in this 2U server with consumer-grade SSDs