Fusion-io to release 10TB PCIe flash module

Computerworld - Fusion-io today said it has doubled the capacity of its ioDrive Octal PCIe flash module to 10TB in a single unit and 20TB in a 1U (1.75-in high) form factor server.

The new version of the 10TB ioDrive Octal contains eight 1.28TB multi-level cell (MLC) ioMemory modules (essentially DIMMS) in a single double-wide PCIe card.

The 10TB ioDrive Octal PCIe flash module

The new modules are aimed at data warehousing applications, helping insurance companies, healthcare providers and government agencies more quickly access information from large amounts of stored data.

"Data warehouses in the 10TB to 20TB range is not uncommon. If you think about it, it's about the same size of a lot of flash appliances coming out today," said Rick White, co-founder and chief marketing officer at Fusion-io. "This opens up a new market for us."

The 10 TB ioDrive Octal can achieve more than 1.3 million I/Os per second (IOPS) and 6.7GB/sec throughput. Fusion-io said the module is optimized for read-heavy environments such as data warehousing, scale-out architectures, supercomputing and research applications.

Like the company's other PCIe memory modules, the ioDrive Octal is a dual in-line memory module (DIMM) that uses non-volatile flash versus volatile DRAM.

"There's only a handful of I/O calls you can make. There's read, write and append, and that hasn't changed in the last few decades. What we're doing is opening an extension up that's a hybrid that sits between memory and storage, that gives a memory-like interface for storage. We actually emulate storage," White said.

Because the 10TB Fusion ioDrive Octal now offers similar capacity to many memory arrays, it allows Fusion-io VARs and Technology Alliance Program members to build customized Fusion appliances.

"Previously, a 4U server could contain 10 ioDrive Duos for 20 TB of total capacity, but now up to four 10 TB ioDrive Octals can be integrated into a 4U server, such as the HP ProLiant DL585 G7, delivering 40 TB of total capacity," David Flynn, Fusion-io CEO, said in a statement.

The 10 TB ioDrive Octal will be available in in the first quarter of 2012.

Fusion-io did not release pricing information.

Lucas Mearian covers storage, disaster recovery and business continuity, financial services infrastructure and health care IT for Computerworld. Follow Lucas on Twitter at @lucasmearian, or subscribe to Lucas's RSS feed . His e-mail address is lmearian@computerworld.com.

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