Virident Entering Into PCIe SSDs

Virident Systems announced the availability of the tachIOn Solid State Disk (SSD), a new server-side storage platform that enables customers to tackle data intensive applications with lower cost, higher and predictable performance, and enterprise class reliability.

Data intensive applications are a rapidly growing class of applications, tracking the explosive growth of rich media, smart-grid, web 2.0, data analytics, and social media.

tachIOn eclipses the competition as it is designed to last for years rather than months, and delivers a sustained performance level that is 2-10x higher, even for random I/O. It comes with end-to-end error correction, advanced capacity management, and global wear-leveling to assure durability and consistent performance. Its compact half-size/half-length profile maximizes density and allows it to fit in 1U or 2U servers, and a modular design adds flexibility, lowers costs, and eases future field-upgrades. tachIOn is available in 200, 300, or 400 Gbytes of usable capacity per card to fit a range of needs.

The widening speed gap between servers and storage hinders application scalability and lowers data center efficiency, slowing down key initiatives such as dynamic cloud computing deployments. This has led to a growing requirement for Tier-0 storage solutions: fast storage that occupies the space between servers and traditional hard-drive storage solutions, on the server-side and/or the storage-side. Flash-based SSDs have emerged as a preferred path to address this problem, but until now such SSDs have lacked high or predictable performance and suffered from low reliability, which forces customers to replace their SSDs frequently. tachIOn delivers high predictable performance as well as high reliability.

Tier-0 Build-out
tachIOn is also the first product to bring together the necessary hardware and software technologies for a systematic build-out of server-side Tier-0 storage across an entire data center. Dubbed the Virident GreenCloud Storage Software, this capability will be released in phases to enable large-scale deployment of SSDs, which until now has been hampered by capacity fragmentation and inconsistent availability of SSD resources to applications that need them.

Virident Systems has built world-class expertise in flash and related non-volatile memory technologies and assembled a world-class team focused on the use of such technologies by modern data-intensive applications.

"We really like the tachIOn SSD. For our applications, it scales better than the other PCIe SSD cards we’ve tested and deployed. We’re heavy users and our service needs to be available to our customers 24×7, so performance and reliability are very important to us – and the Virident tachIOn PCIe SLC SSD delivers. We’re very pleased to finally have some serious competition in the enterprise SSD market," said Will Lowe, Director Operations, iParadigms.

"Increased affordability and reliability characterize today’s SSD technology. With the advent of PCIe based SSDs, TCS believes that SSDs have come of age for IO acceleration in enterprise systems. Their ability to reduce latency of access by an order of magnitude translates into substantial performance improvements," said Rajesh K Mansharamani, vice president performance engineering, Tata Consultancy Services (TCS). TCS recently conducted an evaluation of the Virident tachIOn SSD at the TCS Performance Engineering Innovation Lab.

"In a recent study Objective Analysis determined that the market for high-performance PCI Express SSDs should out-strip the combined markets for SSDs using all other high-speed interfaces by 2015," said Jim Handy, SSD analyst at Objective Analysis.

"Enterprise customers look to SSDs to boost performance, but also require a solution that fits within today’s data center architectures," said Jeff Janukowicz, research manager, Hard Disk Drive Components and Solid State Drives at IDC. "A modular design that separates Flash memory components from the base system, such as Virident’s tachIOn, provides a flexible approach for SSD deployments and improves upgradability and serviceability for the customer."

"Virident Systems is aggressively addressing the growing I/O performance gap in enterprise computing with a high-performance PCIe solid-state storage solution that delivers 2x-4x sustained and predictable IOPS over other PCIe offerings," said Alan Niebel, CEO, Web-Feet Research. "The tachIOn product easily handles multiple and varied workloads and also addresses the enterprise reliability requirements and the need for easy to use Global Wear leveling software that extends product lifetime creating a total systems solution."

"Server-side Tier-0 storage promises to significantly change the way applications perform and scale in the modern virtualized data center," said Dan Olds, Principal at Gabriel Consulting. "Virident Systems brings a clear vision and compelling technologies that distinguish it from the pack."

"tachIOn is faster, more reliable, and offers better economics than competition. We are excited to see an excellent level of market reception to our vision and an excellent level of customer acceptance of our products," said Kumar Ganapathy, CEO of Virident Systems. "Even at full capacity, tachIOn delivers high predictable performance."