Violin Memory 3200 SLC Flash Memory Array

Violin Memory, Inc. announced the availability of the Violin Memory 3200 Flash Memory Array. The Violin 3200 is a redundant, modular 3U memory array that scales from 500GB to 10 Terabyte SLC NAND Flash and provides the industry’s best price/performance attributes using patent-pending Flash RAID technology.

The enterprise-grade Violin 3200 is the first in the Violin 3000 series of Memory Arrays that scale to more than 140 Terabytes in a rack with performance over 3 Million IOPS. The Violin 3200 includes hardware-based flash RAID across hot-swappable memory modules to provide robust data protection and spike free latency of less than 100 microseconds.

Violin’s unique and highly efficient approach to the aggregation of NAND flash enables Violin 3000 series pricing for usable RAID-protected flash from $20/GB. This pricing achieves cost parity with performance HDD storage arrays and increases performance by a factor of ten.

“To recognize the full potential of NAND flash it should be delivered in a purpose built system designed specifically to harness the revolutionary nature of the technology and not retro-fitted into a legacy system designed for a mechanical era,” said George Crump, Lead Analyst with Storage Switzerland. ”The Memory Array is a new category designed to harness the performance of the solid state storage tier. Memory Arrays like Violin 3200 that scale in every direction; capacity, cost per IOP and footprint are key milestones in the broad acceptance of solid state technology in the Enterprise.”

“We are delighted by the customer response to the Violin 3000 series and our new Memory Array data center equipment category,” said Don Basile, CEO of Violin Memory. “The aggregation of flash modules into a Memory Array allows much higher performance and spike-free latency for enterprise applications – Database, data warehousing, VMware as well as custom applications all benefit from the order of magnitude price/performance improvements of Violin’s flash array technology.”

Unlike the Oracle Exadata architecture, the Violin flash memory is RAID protected and can be used as primary storage for any application on any file and operating system. Host access can be provided via PCIe, 4/8Gb Fiber Channel or 10Gb Ethernet. The Violin 3000 series enables the next generation virtualized data center and cloud infrastructures.

“IT managers are discovering great benefits in adding flash to existing storage hierarchies,” said Jim Handy, SSD analyst at Objective Analysis. ”Today flash is being added incrementally through SSDs. Violin’s strategy to provide a flash Memory Array to compete with high-speed HDD arrays at an equivalent price and capacity point is a novel approach that can radically change the economics of the data center.”