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Computerworld - Texas Memory Systems today unveiled its fastest and highest capacity solid state disk (SSD) system, the RamSan 6200, which offers as much as 100 terabytes of capacity in a single 40U rack configuration. The system also can sustain 5 million input/outputs per second (IOPS) with 60GB/sec. throughput while using slightly more than 6 kilowatts of power, the company said.

The array is aimed at high-performance, enterprise-class relational database systems, as well as data warehousing, modeling, simulations, rendering and video editing.

To achieve the equivalent level of performance with hard disk drive-based storage arrays would require several thousand of the fastest, most expensive 15,000 RPM Fibre Channel hard disk drives, Texas Memory Systems said.

But the system doesn't come cheap. A fully loaded RamSan 6200 rack will have a retail price tag in the $4.4 million range. A single 1U, 5TB RamSan-620 unit is $220,000, the company said.

"The RamSan 6200 changes the storage equation for large databases, science and research labs, seismic processing, video, and federal government installations," said Woody Hutsell, Texas Memory Systems president, in a statement. "It's the only currently available SSD system offering anything remotely approaching this storage capacity and performance."

The RamSan-6200 uses single-level cell (SLC) NAND flash memory, multiple levels of RAID and advanced flash management algorithms to provide greater reliability. The SSD array is managed through Texas Memory System's own TeraWatch software that is capable of monitoring up to twenty RamSan 620 chassis from a GUI console.

The RamSan 6200 supports from 40 to 160 4Gbit/sec Fibre Channel ports or 20 to 80 10Gbit/sec InfiniBand ports.

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