Fusion-io ioScale: Up to 3.2TB on a Half Length PCIe Slot

At the Open Compute Summit, Fusion-io, Inc. announced ioScale.

Previously exclusive to Fusion-io customers outfitting thousands of servers, ioScale is available for hyperscale and cloud companies in minimum order quantities of one hundred units.

Each ioScale provides up to 3.2TB of reliable Fusion ioMemory capacity that is performance tuned for the unique needs of webscale environments. With prices starting at $3.89 per gigabyte with increasing discounts based on volume, ioScale now makes it practical to architect an all-flash datacenter at scale.

"By making ioScale available to growing webscale and emerging cloud companies, Fusion-io is at the forefront of the transition to the all-flash hyperscale datacenter, powered by open software defined solutions," said David Flynn, Fusion-io CEO and chairman. "Hyperscale companies are an entirely different market with different needs compared to enterprise organizations. Fusion ioScale has been specifically designed with the input of existing hyperscale market leaders to maximize the simplicity of the all-flash datacenter and meet the unique needs of webscale customers. Fusion-io is pleased to now be able to offer this technology to emerging market leaders to help them redefine what’s possible when it comes to cost effectively delivering rich data services to millions of people around the world."

By leveraging involvement with its partners, ioScale evolved from the high volume Fusion ioFX workstation acceleration products. It delivers on the needs of webscale and emerging cloud companies, meeting their requirements for price, maximum rack density and reliability. As the industry shifts to open software defined datacenters, solutions like ioScale are powerful I/O engines that improve the performance and efficiency of hyperscale infrastructure.

"We’re thrilled to see Fusion-io launching ioScale in conjunction with the Open Compute Summit and making this high-performance, low-power technology more broadly available," said Frank Frankovsky, chairman of the Open Compute Foundation and VP of Hardware Design and Supply Chain at Facebook, Inc. "We’ve been involved in all stages of the product’s research and development, and we’re excited by this technology’s potential to help the industry meet its rapidly growing storage demands."

Simplified, higher density and more reliable servers make the hyperscale all-flash datacenter more efficient than datacenters based on SSD and HDD systems. The reduced floor space requirements, lower power consumption, and the tolerance of wider temperature and humidity ranges reduce operational costs and environmental impact through an all-flash hyperscale datacenter.

"Hyperscale companies architect their infrastructure with bare bones servers and open source software that scales-out cost-effectively in the hundreds and thousands," said David Floyer, Wikibon CTO. "These organizations focus on capital expenses; this is very different from the operating expense focus seen at traditional enterprises that implement feature-rich infrastructure with long lifespans. The data requirements of these hyperscale companies are growing astronomically fast, much faster than the enterprise market. The design of the ioScale flash memory products will enable Fusion-io to reach a broader range of webscale and cloud companies, including the emerging hyperscale leaders who will power the services consumers will enjoy in an always-connected world."

Benefits of Fusion ioScale include:

• Up to 3.2TB of capacity on a single half length PCIe slot, with a single controller, enabling a small form factor server to scale to 12.8TB or more, delivering maximum rack density and reducing the need for antiquated disk drive bays
• Hyperscale servers supporting UEFI can boot from ioScale, further eliminating the need for RAID controllers or disk infrastructure in spartan webscale servers with limited space
• Fusion-io endurance in all capacities, empowering caching, write-heavy databases and large scale applications
• Enterprise reliability with the Self-Healing, Wear Management, and Predictive Monitoring capabilities of ioMemory, ensuring customers can meet even high service level requirements
• Compatibility with the ioMemory software development kit to leverage APIs like Atomic Writes and directFS permitting applications to run natively on flash