IBM Builds 4TB RAID From SSDs

IBM Builds 4TB RAID From SSDs

Monday, September 01, 2008 - by Dave Altavilla
As we've recently told you, SSDs will be the storage technology of the future.  In addition, we're also quickly coming to a close on the launch of our first comprehensive SSD round-up here at HotHardware, that will give you a good sense of where SSD technology stands today in the mainstream and where it's going in the future.  Gazing into the crystal ball for a minute or two, typically, if you track "big iron" storage companies, eventually what is adopted there often times trickles down to the end user market.  Fittingly, if IBM's recent achievement in high density SSD technology is any foreshadow of things to come in SSD storage, you could perhaps project that, at this time next year, we're all going to be enjoying blazingly fast sub-1ms random access times of SSD technology in our personal rigs as a primary storage subsystem.  IBM chalks up testing on a 4-terabyte Solid State Disk-based storage array?  Oh behave baby... And it's being power by technology from flash-based storage solutions start-up Fusion-io.

"Under the rubric Project Quicksilver, IBM coupled solid-state drives with its storage virtualization technology to achieve a sustained data transfer rate of more than 1 million input/output per second (IOPS), with a response time of less than one millisecond in a 4.1-terabyte rack of SSD storage. SSDs are being supplied by Fusion-io.


Fusion-io's ioDrive, 120K random read/write IOPS

By comparison, Intel is commercially shipping SSDs (X25-E Extreme) that individually achieve random data reads of 35,000 IOPS and random writes of 3,300 IOPS. In a 3.8-terabyte storage array using 120 SSDs, Intel claims 4.2 million IOPS."

In reality, a more interesting question might be, what will the enthusiast's storage platform of the future look like, SATA-based SSDs or PCI Express based SSD blades?  It's fun to ponder for a nanosecond, isn't it?  Regardless, we shall commence to pestering the good people of Fusion-io now, in an effort to obtain said PCIe SSD card for a traditional HotHardware beat-down evaluation and showcase.
Via: Cnet | News Archive | Tags: SSD, IBM, RAID, SD, SSDs, DS, build, TB, 4TB, id
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By warlord on Sep 1, 2008

In reality, a more interesting question might be, what will the enthusiast's storage platform of the future look like, SATA-based SSDs or PCI Express based SSD blades? It's fun to ponder for a nanosecond, isn't it? Regardless, we shall commence to pestering the good people of Fusion-io now, in an effort to obtain said PCIe SSD card for a traditional HotHardware beat-down evaluation and showcase.

Can't wait to see some #'s

By bob_on_the_cob on Sep 1, 2008

Very cool stuff. I guess we won't need the hard drive format once we move to ssd.

By 3vi1 on Sep 2, 2008

I think that in the long run we'll end up with something that plugs in like SATA (though it may not *be* SATA) instead of blades, because it's cheaper to have the generalized control components on the motherboard.

IDE vs. SCSI all over again.

By bob_on_the_cob on Sep 2, 2008

True but do we have to stick to the huge hard drive format? I wish one day that movies and music would be sold on SD cards(or downloads) and everything would be smaller.

By warlord on Sep 2, 2008

I agree. I would like to see just how small they can get the footprint. The smaller the size the more you can fit in a can

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