SMART Thinking
Latest Post
Executive Thought Leader Series: SMART + Diablo = New Era of Flash Storage
Welcome to the first post in our new thought leader series! We’re bringing SMART Storage Systems news to you, straight from the executive team behind it. To kick off the series, we sat down with the President of SMART Storage Systems, John Scaramuzzo, to gather more details around our recent partnership with Diablo Technologies – a topic John was thrilled to discuss! Why? Guess you’ll just have to see what he says…
Q. What did SMART Storage Systems and Diablo Technologies announce today?
A. SMART Storage Systems and Diablo Technologies have forged an exclusive relationship that will usher in a new era of ultra-low latency Flash storage technology. This partnership will bring together our own Guardian Technology Platform and Diablo Technologies’ Memory Channel Storage platform. Together, we are creating a new class of enterprise SSDs with ultra-low latency, which will be unlike anything else on the market, delivering significantly improved performance and latency to dramatically transform enterprise servers, cloud computing environment, relational databases, virtualization and cloud services.
Q. Why did SMART Storage Systems and Diablo Technologies partner on combining the Guardian Technology Platform with Diablo’s Memory Channel Storage?
A. For us, it wasn’t a question of “if” we should partner with Diablo Technologies but “how soon.” By combining SMART Storage Systems’ Guardian Technology Platform and enterprise design team with Diablo’s MCS technology, we can create a new ultra-low-latency tier of enterprise Flash storage at a competitive cost/GB. Since day one, we have been focused on revolutionizing the storage industry by providing cost-effective Flash storage solutions that meet the needs of enterprise organizations. Until today, this was done by leveraging SMART Storage Systems’ Guardian Technology Platform to increase the endurance of MLC Flash so it can be effective in enterprise applications. Together, we are taking innovation to a whole other level, combining our leading technologies to bring to market a new class of enterprise SSDs.
Q. What is the challenge this partnership is helping to overcome?
A. Up until now, volatile DRAM was the only media that could communicate directly with the microprocessors memory controller. This partnership allows us to connect Flash as persistent storage directly to the memory controller.
Additionally, this new product will create a new tier of storage within the enterprise data center, dramatically improving latency, transaction throughput, IO bandwidth, density, scalability and operating cost over a wide range of enterprise-level deployments when compared to Flash-based designs using PCIe, or SAS/SATA-based SSDs.
Q. What are we trying to change with this partnership?
A. The world! No, but seriously, Flash-based memory storage will change the way enterprise software and systems are designed, providing new levels of performance and storage density.
This new product is expected to provide 50 percent higher transaction rates with 80 percent lower latency in database caching and OLTP applications, and enable 10X more virtual machines per server while reducing DRAM requirements by more than 70 percent in virtualized environments. It’s just incredible!
Q. What is the end goal?
A. We believe this new product will usher in a new era of ultra-low latency Flash storage. This new product will not only be about re-architecting storage, but re-architecting the integration of servers, storage and flash acceleration.
Q. What does this mean for the future of SMART Storage Systems and for the storage industry?
A. I firmly believe this partnership will strengthen our position as a leader in enterprise storage. We’re bringing to market a new high performance tier of persistent storage unlike anything seen before.
Q. What does the “New Era of Flash Storage” mean for the storage industry?
A. We’re looking at new, organic growth in overall enterprise storage demand and the need to dramatically transform enterprise servers, cloud computing environments, relational databases, virtualization and cloud services.
To find out more about our recent announcement, visit our website or catch up with us on Twitter.
- John Scaramuzzo, President, SMART Storage Systems
