Archive for January, 2012
Posted January 27th, 2012
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Kaminario Storage Experts Speak on Revolutionizing SSD Storage
RAISING THE BAR ON SSD STORAGE ARCHITECTURES
By Kaminario
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In three new videos posted on the company’s website, Kaminario storage experts CEO and cofounder Dani Golan, VP of Engineering Shachar Fienblit, and Senior Solutions Consultant Kevin Colton explain the structure, development, and implementation of the Kaminario K2’s all solid-state SAN storage.
According to Dani Golan, solid-state drive (SSD) adoption has been held back by antiquated architectures created for slower and in some cases obsolete storage technologies. He believes that to unlock the blistering speed of SSD, “you need a dramatically different architecture.” “Kaminario’s unique and multifaceted Scale-out Storage Performance Architecture™, known as SPEAR, is based on four elements,” explains Golan. “A modular, scale-out design; best-of-breed open components; freedom of choice of the right solid-state media (Flash or DRAM) for specific applications; and the highest availability.” This approach and design plant the Kaminario flag at the forefront of the SSD market and, according to Golan, “Allow us to lead the revolution for all solid-state SAN storage.” Read the rest of this entry »
Tags:application performance, Dani Golan, Database Performance, DRAM, Flash memory, Fusion-io, I/O bottlenecks, K2, Kaminario, SDD, Shachar Fienblit, solid-state, Storage Performance
Posted in SSD Storage Performance | No Comments »
Posted January 25th, 2012
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Notes from the Trenches
ENTERPRISE IT IS DOING ITS HOMEWORK ON SSD.
By Gareth Taube, Vice President Marketing, Kaminario
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Recently, I had the pleasure of listening to Kevin Colton, one of our solutions consultants, speak with some of our new hires about Kaminario’s market, its customers, and customer concerns and pain points. It was interesting hear a bit of what’s actually happening out there in the trenches, so I thought I’d share some of it with our readers.
According to Kevin, the tone of the market has shifted noticeably in the past 18 months. Before that time, Kevin was spending a lot of time with potential customers to demonstrate how the K2 could solve their I/O latency and performance issues. The interest was there, but there was also hesitance, as most IT departments were still “doing their homework” on SSD solutions and concerned about reliability, wear leveling, and other similar issues.
In the past several months, the high performance storage market has started to flip. Having finished their homework, enterprise customers are now approaching Kaminario in increasing numbers. Price is still a concern, particularly with DRAM SSD solutions, but falling prices, a better awareness of where SSDs make economic sense, and the SSD freedom of choice the Kaminario K2 all solid-state (Flash and DRAM) SAN storage provides have alleviated those concerns.
Read the rest of this entry »
Tags:analytics, batch processing, business intelligence, clustering, controllers, CRM, data warehouse, DRAM, electric utilities, email marketing, ERP, financial firms, heatthcare, hybrid, I/O, I/O Performance, insurance companies, K2, Kaminario, latency, manageability, metadata, N+1, reliability, research database, risk analysis, SAN storage, Scalability, service providers, SSD, telecommunications, university, usability, wear leveling
Posted in SSD Case Studies | No Comments »
Posted January 23rd, 2012
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Join the Flash-SSD Revolution
WEBINAR SERIES WITH KEVIN COLTON, KAMINARIO SOLUTION CONSULTANT
By Kaminario
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Take the first step in the solid-state disk revolution and join us for an informational webinar. Find out about the new all solid-state SAN storage from Kaminario and the next generation storage architecture called SPEAR. Learn how you can turbo-charge your applications and significantly improve database performance.
Dates: January 25, February 8 or February 22
Time: All webinars take place at 1:00pm EST
Speaker: Kevin Colton, Kaminario Solution Consultant
Kevin is a storage industry expert and works with Fortune 500 enterprises to help them solve their application and database performance problems.
Click here to register for any of the upcoming Join the Flash SSD Revolution Webinars.
Posted in SSD Architectures | No Comments »
Posted January 23rd, 2012
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Kaminario K2 Named Finalist in Search Storage’s 2011 Products of the Year Awards
SSD COMPANIES DOMINATE STORAGE SYSTEMS CATEGORY
By Gareth Taube, Vice President Marketing, Kaminario
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Yesterday, Search Storage and Storage Magazine announced finalists in six categories for its 2011 Products of the Year awards. We’re very excited that Kaminario was named a finalist in the storage systems category for its K2 Flash and DRAM all solid-state SAN storage.
Two things stand out when you peruse the finalist list. First, eight of the 11 finalists had some mention of SSDs in their descriptions. That shows the momentum SSDs are gaining in the market. Secondly, it is clear that the big storage players do not have a monopoly on innovation. The list includes several emerging companies doing great things, like Kaminario, to help customers enjoy the benefits of SSDs.
We continue to believe that 2012 will be the Year of the SSD. Congrats and good luck to all the finalists. We are happy to be among them.
Tags:application performance, Awards, Database Performance, DRAM, DRAM-based SSD Appliances, Flash, Flash SSD, Kaminario K2, Product of the Year, Searchstorage, TechTarget
Posted in SSD Architectures | No Comments »
Posted January 20th, 2012
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Kaminario for Cloud Speed and Reliability
NO DARK CLOUDS HERE!
By Gareth Taube, Vice President Marketing, Kaminario
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In his December 18 SSD Guy blog entry, Jim Handy of Objective Analysis, citing SandForce’s new SSD processor, discusses why cloud providers need to choose their SSD solutions carefully. He discusses some of the capabilities cloud computing data centers need from SSD, including very low latency, high capacity at a low price, and high reliability.
Kaminario agrees with many of these cloud requirements. However, sometimes we go about providing them in slightly different and multiple ways. Here’s our take on SSD in the cloud and how Kaminario provides the features cloud data centers require.
Read the rest of this entry »
Tags:cloud computing, data center, DRAM, Flash, freedom of choice, FusionIO, high availability, Jim Handy, K2, Kaminario, latency, MLC, Objective Analysis, parallel processing, reliability, Scalability, SPEAR architecture, SSD, SSD Guy, the cloud, UPS
Posted in SSD Storage Performance | No Comments »
Posted January 16th, 2012
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Free Buffer Wait
By Eyal Markovich
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So far in the series of Oracle storage wait events we have covered several common events such as “db file sequential read”, “db file scattered read” wait events, direct path read and Direct path Read/Write temp. In this post, I will describe another wait event that in many cases is caused by weak storage performance.
Read the rest of this entry »
Tags:application performance, Database Performance, DBWR, DRAM, Flash, Free Buffer Wait, I/O bottlenecks, I/O Performance, I/O wait, Kaminario, Oracle, reads, SSD, writes
Posted in Oracle Database Performance | No Comments »
Posted January 13th, 2012
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The 451 Group Reports on the Growing Role of SSD Storage
KAMINARIO CUSTOMER ISRAEL ELECTRIC COMPANY IS FEATURED
By Gareth Taube, Vice President Marketing, Kaminario
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451 Research published a very interesting report titled “Flash Forward: The Growing Role of Solid-State Storage. It provides an in-depth look at the SSD market and how flash is disrupting it. The report covers the technological innovations that are making NAND flash increasingly attractive to customers while examining some of the challenges that lie ahead for the industry.
The Israel Electric Company, a Kaminario customer, is featured in the report for its use of the K2 Flash and DRAM SSD SAN storage. We profiled the company late last year here.
The 451 report is a great read. Find it here.
Tags:451 Research, application performance, Database Performance, DRAM-based SSD Appliances, Flash memory, Flash SSD, Kaminario, Kaminario K2, SANs, SSD, ssd market, Storage Performance
Posted in SSD Architectures | No Comments »
Posted January 12th, 2012
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Look Into the Crystal Ball: It’s SSD!
JUST ABOUT EVERYONE AGREES THAT SSD IS IN YOUR FUTURE.
By Gareth Taube, Vice President Marketing, Kaminario
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It’s that time of year again when everyone and his/her cousin starts looking back at the year before and predicting the year ahead. I’ve been scanning the Web for 2012 storage predictions, and as someone who lives and breathes SSD, I have to say that what I’ve seen warms my heart. Everyone seems to agree that 2012 will be a banner year for SSD.
Let’s start with SearchStorage.com, which waxes about the alignment of SSD stars and predicts “Flash” floods in the enterprise in 2012. The stars include lower flash prices, enterprise-ready MLC SSD, and more and more choices in all-flash storage arrays. In another posting it points to rapidly improving Flash endurance thanks to advances in architectures, algorithms, and controllers. Not to mention the unfortunate floods in Thailand making hard disks harder and more expensive to come by.
Similar metaphors come from ComputerWorld’s Chris Poelker, who predicts that SSD will become ubiquitous and pines for “2001: A Space Odyssey with HAL-like storage accessed at light speed over an optical holographic matrix.”
Read the rest of this entry »
Tags:2012, access time, algorithm, architecture, business continuity, Chris Poelker, ComputerWord, controller, data warehousing, disaster recovery, enterprise, Enterprise Storage Forum, Enterprise Strategy Group, FC, Flash, flash storage arrays, George Crump, HDD, IDC, Information Week, InfoStor, IOPS, Kaminario, Mark Peters, MLC, Network Computing, OLTP, power, SAS, SATA, seachstorage.com, SSD, storage arrays, Storage Newsletter, storage predictions, Thailand, tier 0, transfer rate, Valentines Day, ZDNet
Posted in SSD Architectures | No Comments »
Posted January 11th, 2012
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Software, Hardware and Services Wrapped Around Flash Will Drive Enterprise Adoption
KAMINARIO RESPONDS TO WIKIBON INFOGRAPHIC
By Gareth Taube, Vice President Marketing, Kaminario
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Wikibon recently posted an infographic highlighting the looming battle for the enterprise between traditional hard-disk drives and “our flash enterprise hero.” The infographic describes some of the analyst organization’s price and performance research and the products that will benefit such as SAP/Oracle and cloud applications.
The history of higher performance storage adoption favors SSDs to win this war as the storage media of choice in the data center, even though there will be roles for HDDs and tape. SSDs are packing more performance at less cost than ever; Computerworld published recent IDC numbers stating that prices for SSDs going into PCs are “expected to fall below $1 per gigabyte during the second half of 2012.” You can already argue that SSD should win on price/performance alone.
It is a mistake, however, to focus solely on price and performance when comparing SSD solutions. Data protection and manageability are vital areas that are often equally as important as price/performance. Data center and application managers like lower costs and faster speeds, but cannot afford risking data availability and protection. Securing data availability and protection while maintaining high performance will drive SSD adoption even further.
Conclusions:
- No question that SSDs will eventually overtake HDDs in the data center to support big data, database, ERP and other applications requiring large numbers of transactions.
- The battle is not just about price/performance — data availability and protection, combined with price/performance, will help drive SSD adoption.
- Software and services wrapped around flash SSD will continue to enhance value in the data center as flash evolves into a commodity product.
- To thrive, SSDs will need to be housed in arrays purpose-built for SSDs.
Read the rest of this entry »
Tags:analytics, application performance, Database Performance, Flash, Flash memory, IOPS, Kaminario, Kaminario K2, SSD, Storage Performance, Wikibon
Posted in Data Protection | 1 Comment »
Posted January 9th, 2012
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Get Ready to Kick Some Flash
2012 PROMISES TO BE THE YEAR OF SSD ENTERPRISE STORAGE
By Dani Golan
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In January, the San Diego Supercomputer Center will debut Flash Gordon, the first flash memory-based supercomputer. It features 300 TB of flash that can perform 36 million IOPS. This achievement is a fitting way to kick off 2012, which will be the Year of SSD storage in the enterprise. While no one is declaring HDD dead, the transition to SSD storage has begun in earnest — especially in high-end enterprise storage. In fact, it is easy to see that over the next decade, SSDs will become the dominant storage media in the data center. Let’s take a look at some of the trends that are making this happen.
2012 TRENDS/FORCES HELPING DRIVE SSD ADOPTION
Enterprise revenues from SSDs will continue to grow
Organizations vote with their dollars. According to research firm IDC, revenue from SSD sales to enterprises in Q3 was$522 million, more than twice the dollar figure over the same period in 2010. There is no reason why that trend won’t continue, especially as vendors do a better job explaining SSD costs versus HDD costs.
Recently, Mark Bramfitt from storage analyst firm Wikibon stated:
“Solid-state storage is poised to enter mainstream use in data centers in the near term, driven by large potential performance advantages and supported by dropping cost premiums compared to disk-based systems.”
Media and online attention about SSDs is also increasing. A Google search for “SSD flash” yielded 14.6 million results during 2010. Searching the same phrase in 2011 gave you 112 million results. Trade publications such as Storage Magazine and INFOSTOR are putting SSD adoption among their 2012 storage trends. INFOSTOR’s Drew Robb wrote that SSDs continue “to represent one of the hottest areas of innovation in data storage.”
Read the rest of this entry »
Tags:application performance, Database Performance, DRAM, enterprise storage, Flash, Kaminario, solid-state SAN storage, SSD, Storage Performance, storage predictions, virtualization
Posted in SSD Architectures | No Comments »
