Fujitsu Reselling Violin Memory All-Flash Arrays

Fujitsu Technology Solutions announces a new flash-storage strategy and the extension of its portfolio to serve customers requiring the highest I/O performance.

The company is entering into an agreement with Violin Memory, Inc. to resell its all-flash-array Violin 6000 systems to customers requiring high I/O performance and low latency. The new partnership extends Fujitsu’s offerings to deliver the solution for dealing with applications where storage performance has a high impact on the overall response time.

As data creation and use continues to grow exponentially, storage performance is needed to avoid system bottlenecks, and deliver huge amounts of storage data at high speed.

The announcement is part of Fujitsu’s threefold strategy to deliver flash storage technologies to boost overall performance.

Firstly, Fujitsu enabled the combination of scalable capacity with performance, introducing SSDs and large cache memory capacities of its ETERNUS DX disk-based storage systems. Further cache-size increases, and resulting performance premium, will be achieved in 2012.

The second step was the additional acceleration of performance for specific workloads, such as VMware and databases, through the integration of PCIe flash-card technology from Fusion IO into Fujitsu PRIMERGY servers. By introducing ioTurbine and DirectCache, the card can be used as a cache for the ETERNUS DX RAID arrays.

This third extension means that customer scenarios requiring extreme read/write storage performance – including large databases, large server and desktop virtualization environments, demanding business analytics and big data – are now served with the addition to the Fujitsu portfolio of Violin 6000 systems. These scenarios require all-flash storage arrays designed for performance.

Marcus Schneider, head of Product Development Group for Storage, Fujitsu Technology Solutions, said: "By adding Violin 6000 systems to the portfolio, Fujitsu now offers the ideal storage mix to balance performance and capacity needs. Fujitsu ETERNUS DX offers high performance in the general purpose storage segment and can scale into the petabyte range of capacity, whereas Violin Memory all-flash arrays deliver peak performance for virtualization, database and business analytics. In Violin Memory we have found a partner that not only offers leading technology, but has already demonstrated excellent customer references."

Don Basile, president and CEO, Violin Memory, said: "We are pleased that Fujitsu has chosen Violin flash Memory Arrays to be a foundational pillar in its flash storage strategy. In a world where increasing demands are being placed on applications to deliver real-time response and more applications are being virtualized, we believe the enterprise data center needs to accelerate the adoption of flash storage. With the addition of the Violin Memory flash arrays, Fujitsu is enhancing its storage portfolio with a solution that can economically address data center workloads at the appropriate service level."
 
Violin 6000 systems are available to order on the Fujitsu price list. Prices vary depending on configuration and capacity of the appliance and the region, beginning at €175,000 for the smallest fully-configured systems.