Sun Also Into Enterprise SSDs

Sun Microsystems is preparing to introduce new Sun solid state disks (SSD) to the market that will give customers greater application performance, massive scale and value through the integration of the Solaris Operating System (OS), Solaris ZFS and other open source technologies. Sun is already shipping Solaris ZFS software optimized for SSD technologies through the OpenSolaris community and is the first major systems vendor to add an end-to-end Flash-based disk product line to its portfolio, leapfrogging competitors and giving customers 3x better performance at one-fifth the energy consumption of traditional spinning disk offerings.

New Flash disks integrated in storage systems and servers will join Sun’s list of industry-leading products available for free, no-risk trials under Sun’s Try and Buy program. Because the New Flash arrays so dramatically reduce energy use, they will join Sun’s growing portfolio of Eco Innovation products and services.

With the recent explosion of data that needs to be processed efficiently and immediately accessible, companies of all sizes are looking to open source storage solutions that work with general purpose hardware. Flash-based innovation enables these customers to immediately increase application performance and save on energy costs compared to traditional Fibre Channel hard drives. Flash technology will also enable greater system utilization and scalability that will decrease server and storage sprawl in already maxed-out data centers.

"Flash SSD is the most exciting innovation to happen to system and storage design in over a decade. By mid-2009, it will be in the majority of servers and deliver more capacity than DRAM and far greater overall system performance and energy efficiency," said John Fowler, executive vice president, Systems Group, Sun Microsystems, Inc. "This technology will completely change how server and storage infrastructure is designed and deployed in enterprise data centers."

2008: Tipping Point for Flash Storage
With the sprawl of under-utilized server and storage systems growing out of control and generating exorbitant power, cooling and space costs, customers are ready for Flash SSD technologies. The Flash SSD market is currently defined by consumer electronics and high volume deployment on cell phones, mp3 players, key chain dongles and other devices has driven down the cost for Flash technology. In the storage industry, 2008 will prove to be a pivotal tipping point for Flash technology, as the performance and reliability along with the price of SSD is expected to be more attractive than Fibre Channel hard drive technology. Enterprise class Fibre Channel hard disk drives have only exhibited a 40 percent year-over-year price decline in the last decade, while the Flash SSD price per gigabyte continues to fall between 50 to 70 percent annually.

Sun’s Open Approach to Flash Storage
Sun is first to market with software integration and co-development of enterprise Flash technology with other industry leaders. Sun’s Flash SSD technologies are optimized for MySQL database and other leading applications. These solutions leverage open source platforms and communities to uniquely address these issues, increase the performance of data intensive applications and deliver the industry’s best value. The integration of Solaris ZFS in Open Storage systems, Sun’s industry standard servers and Sun services sets Sun apart in the industry. These solutions are "Flash Ready" today so customers can easily, simply and cost-effectively scale their infrastructure as required and ensure data is securely stored and accessible 24/7.

Flash Storage is Greener
Customers today are running out of space, power and cooling and are looking to solve the growing problem. Forty-one percent of Fortune 500 IT execs claim power/cooling as a major problem. Over 25 percent of an IT budget is used for energy (power and cooling) costs and this number continues to rise. Flash technology SSDs consume around one fifth of the power of both memory DIMMs and disk drives, have no rotating media and consume very little power when not in use, making it "greener" than its alternatives.

Availability
Sun is expected to deliver Flash-based products to market in the 2HCY08.

Comments

Below is the analysis of Benjamin Woo, from IDC, with the contribution of Vernon Turner.

Benjamin Woo, Vice President of IDC’s Enterprise Storage Systems research

Sun announces SSD disks - promoting new use cases

Unlike HDS and EMC however, Sun is not simply announcing the addition of a flash product. Its announcement involves tight integration with its Solaris OS, Solaris ZFS file system, and "other open source technologies." While Sun is not expected to ship flash-based products until well into the second half of 2008, it claims it has already started conversations with many existing and prospective customers.

A major vendor announcing the use of flash products is no longer something unique. What makes this announcement different is the use cases Sun is promoting. Sun intends to sell both single-level cell (SLC) and multi-level cell (MLC) based flash products depending on the use case of the customer. The significance of this dynamic is the lower cost-basis associated with MLC-based flash. However, MLC-based flash also offers less performance and reliability than SLC - hence the need to understand use cases thoroughly. For those customers who also run ZFS as their file system, Sun is claiming that flash technology can be used in concert with system memory to extend the caching capability of the file system. (In actuality, Sun is essentially implementing a swap file-like system on flash).

EMC and HDS, which have both announced flash products, have only suggested the use of flash disks as Tier 0 disks, but not necessarily as additional cache. This is the first time that a storage systems vendor has suggested that flash could be used for caching.

This announcement shows Sun's innovation in its approach to storage. Through ZFS and OpenSolaris, Sun is empowering its customers and developers alike to inject their ideas and create a multitude of new use cases for its technology. By continuing to move towards general-purpose industry standard components to make up its solutions, Sun customers can benefit from the decreasing cost of technology over time. Through open-source technologies, developers can create applications to address new or specific business or technology challenges.

However, Sun is still in transition from a hardware based business model (for its profits), to a services and solutions model. This change in focus may have hit a bump in the road as it reorganizes its sales organization due to Don Gratham’s departure to HP. At this time, Sun may be challenged to get recognition from its customers using innovation (such as this recent announcement) as a differentiator while it calms them with new product roadmaps. At the end of the day, hardware product shipments will still drive profitability, and Sun needs to continue its journey of making sure that its channel partners remain confident in this vision.