ioDrive Octal gives a new meaning to high-capacity NAND storage

Nov 15, 2011 15:44 GMT  ·  By

Fusion I-O doesn't exactly refer to the ioDrive Octal as a solid state drive (SSD), but that is, basically, what the device is, although, true enough, its construction, capacity and performance are enough to make it qualify as a product category all on its own.

Some may call this boasting, until they actually read the press release and stumble over a few bits of information.

One detail is the storage capacity of 10 terabytes, all on the same PCI Express add-in board.

Achieved by cramming a lot of MLC (multi-level cell) NAND Flash chips together, this is twice the maximum of what Fusion-io had before.

Capacity is joined by a high level of performance, supposedly ready for even accelerating large data sets at low latencies (over 1.3 million IOPS with 6.7 GB/s bandwidth).

Research, warehousing, read-heavy workloads, sclae-out architectures, all are among the things that the newcomer can be used for.

“The 10TB ioDrive Octal packs increased raw flash capacity in a server, enabling customers to accelerate even very large data sets with an intelligent and efficient ioMemory solution,” said David Flynn, Fusion-io chairman and CEO.

“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.

“We believe that with the 10 TB ioDrive Octal, even highly data-intensive organizations can house increased amounts of data directly within the server to simultaneously accelerate their business and the efficiency of their data center.”

For those who might be nursing hopes that they may lay their hands on this, they will have to be ready to pay a huge sum for it.

The press release didn't say what it was, only that anyone seeking possession of it should contact a representative at their contact page.