Texas Memory Said to Achieve 500,000 IO/s

Texas Memory Systems, Inc. announced the availability of the 10-TeraByte SLC Flash based RamSan-630 with 500,000 I/Os per second (IOPS) in a 3U enclosure. Currently, 10 Fibre Channel links (4-Gb) allow 4-GB/s of aggregated bandwidth for the RamSan-630. In a few months, new InfiniBand and 8-Gb Fibre Channel adapters will allow 8-GB/s of aggregated bandwidth. With these performance numbers, the 10-TB RamSan-630 sets the standard for immediate (microseconds not milliseconds) high volume database storage access.

Applications are constantly expanding capacity needs and performance requirements. As user loads continue to increase, the IT community is challenged to optimize limited data center resources, such as space, power and cooling. Traditional, mechanical Hard Disk Drive (HDD) based storage is inherently slow, bulky, and power-intensive when compared to Flash storage. However, simply incorporating Flash into HDD form factor systems delivers limited improvement in performance and power usage. Even Flash systems using PCIe interfaces do not allow multiple servers to access all of the capacity at this bandwidth level, a core requirement of the Enterprise. In contrast, the RamSan-630 has been engineered to optimize Flash capabilities to meet the full spectrum of Enterprise needs for performance, reliability, and efficiency. It is unique in its ability to scale horizontally and offer shared access to multiple servers. It is the 16th generation SSD from Texas Memory Systems, the supplier with the largest, most demanding SSD production installations worldwide.

“Flash SSD is one of the most transformative technologies available in the data center,” said George Crump, Lead Analyst with Storage Switzerland. “With the RamSan-630, Texas Memory Systems is again demonstrating its innovation leadership. It has engineered a Flash system backplane that enables applications to leverage the full bandwidth in a networked environment without any changes to the application. Enterprise IT can expect to reap the performance and efficiency of Flash without any upheaval since applications are already architected to maximize bandwidth utilization in traditional HDD infrastructures.”

The RamSan-630 delivers up to 500,000 sustained I/Os per second and 10 terabytes of storage with 8GB/second bandwidth in a single 3U chassis. Latency is less than 80 microseconds. Power utilization is just 450 watts. In order to deliver a similar bandwidth using HDD, it would require a full data center rack and consume 14 times as much power while still falling short of the RamSan-630 performance and latency.

“The RamSan-630 is the smart choice for today’s demanding enterprise data centers,” said Levi Norman, Director of Marketing and OEM for Texas Memory Systems. “We developed it in response to observing how customers were struggling to boost performance without adding to their data center footprint. The explosive growth in IT and storage over the years is resulting in many data centers reaching their limits for space and power draw. High performance computing and data warehouses in particular need high performance, high efficiency storage for batch processes and simultaneous system access. The time is right for RamSan.”

The RamSan-630 is available now from Texas Memory Systems and its partner network.