Posts Tagged ‘SSD’
Posted April 17th, 2013
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Delivering on Our Vision for Enterprise Storage
By Dani Golan
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Today is an important day, not just for Kaminario but, we believe, for the entire enterprise storage industry. Today is the day we announce the Kaminario fourth-generation K2 all-flash storage array. What is so important about our fourth-generation product? Here are a few key points:
Breakthrough TCO: With K2 v4 we have been able to increase the density by more than 500% while cutting the price in half. Why is this so significant? Lowering the cost of enterprise-ready solid-state flash storage has been one of the long-time goals of the industry. If you believe, as we do, that solid-state is the future of Tier One storage, then it must be cost-efficient for all applications, not just those requiring the highest levels of performance. And now it is. What’s more, Kaminario’s TCO breakthrough extends the viability of solid-state to a new class of mid-size customers who can now afford unprecedented levels of performance, resiliency and ease of use from their storage infrastructures.
Killer Performance: Even before today’s announcement Kaminario delivered by far the best performance in the industry, with world record SPC-1 results for sustained performance and price/performance. With K2 v4 we now have 400% more read/write bandwidth than our previous versions, with consistently low latency (120-microsecond writes). Topping it off, we still offer industry-leading IOPS performance. K2 v4 delivers significant across-the-board performance advantages over any other solution for any combination of workloads, be they OLTP, OLAP or virtualization. It’s a level of performance consistency that is unparalleled in the industry.
Bulletproof Resiliency: Our proven SPEAR Scale-Out Architecture maintains data integrity through any type of failure. For most workloads the performance levels of our solutions will be minimally impacted—usually less than 10%. We even guarantee that degradation will max out at 25%. What’s more, our snapshots are the most efficient in the storage industry, enabling instant restore and recovery from any snapshot with no impact on the performance of the production environment. Snaps can be taken in just milliseconds, 20 times faster than any legacy SAN system on the market today. We make snapshots sexy.
These are major advances in solid-state that have been more than five years in the making. They move storage technology to a whole new level. Don’t just take our word for it: Take a look at the new architectural white paper or better yet, the independent report.
On a personal note, it is an important day for me, as well as for the entire team here at Kaminario. From the beginning we envisioned a new era in enterprise storage driven by solid-state flash and a true scale-out architecture. As of today, that vision is a reality. What’s next? We can’t wait to tell you…
Tags:application performance, Database Performance, Flash, Flash SSD, IOPS, K2, Kaminario, latency, OLAP, OLTP, reads, Solid State Storage, SSD, Storage Performance, virtualization, writes
Posted in All Flash Storage Array | No Comments »
Posted January 23rd, 2013
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Shared SSD Arrays for Big Data Performance and Reliability
Speed isn’t everything
By Kaminario
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A November 30 Fusion-io blog entry, Cisco and Fusion-io Tackle Big Data with Oracle NoSQL, highlights blazing NoSQL big data performance achieved by a Cisco Unified Computing System (UCS) configured with server-based Fusion ioDrive2 SSD. The blog and linked Cisco Solution Brief discuss the importance of near-real-time performance when running operations on user profile data in an e-commerce transaction scenario. Fast performance is key to e-commerce customer satisfaction and can be difficult to achieve with the widely fluctuating workloads typical of a busy e-commerce site.
Fusion-io and Cisco make a compelling argument for SSD in near-real-time big data scenarios and for server-based SSD in particular. However, it’s important to remember that for business critical big data applications, you need scalability and bulletproof reliability as well. There’s another solution that is both more reliable and more efficient than server-based SSD: SSD arrays such as the Kaminario K2. Here are some reasons why you should consider an SSD array, and, specifically, a Kaminario K2 with its Scale-out Performance Storage Architecture (SPEAR), for your near-real-time big data needs. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags:availability, big data, Cisco, data protection, DataProtect, Fusion-io, I/O operations, K2, Kaminario, NoSQL, real-time performance, replication, Scalability, scale-out architecture, server-based SSD, shared storage, snapshots, SPEAR, SSD, storage array
Posted in SSD Architectures | No Comments »
Posted November 5th, 2012
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The Hybrid Solution: Best of Both Worlds? Not!
THERE ARE ADVANTAGES AND DISADVANTAGES TO MIXING LEGACY DISK WITH SSD
By Gareth Taube, Vice President Marketing, Kaminario
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Hybrid is an up and coming enterprise storage architecture, advocated by many legacy storage vendors, that supposedly gives you the best of both worlds: the seasoned storage and reliability architecture of a longstanding enterprise storage leader combined with fast SSD, often from an up and coming SSD startup. One such solution, described in this InfoStor article Gridiron Launches SSD-Accelerated OneAppliance Array, combines NetApp’s E-5400 Series storage array with GridIron’s flash-based TurboCharger Appliance. On its face, this sounds like a great solution, as you get NetApp’s tried and tested high availability, replication, and synchronization features with the fast performance of GridIron’s SSD. However, if you’re considering a solution like this, make sure you ask the right questions.
Is SSD used as a cache or mainstream storage? Many of these solutions, including NetApp’s, use SSD as a cache sitting in front of legacy hard disk storage, not as direct storage. Cache can speed up many applications, but it’s not an ideal solution if you need the absolute highest performance you can get from random, write heavy applications such as online transaction processing (OLTP). First, until the architecture figures out which data to put in the cache you’re going to get slow hard-disk-style I/O performance. Second, with a cache architecture writes are often made directly to hard disk rather than to fast SSD, so write-heavy applications such as OLTP don’t benefit from cache as much as they do from direct SSD storage. Finally, you’re not getting maximum storage efficiency as most of the data in the cache is duplicated on the hard disk.
Read the rest of this entry »
Tags:availability, cache, DataProtect, E-5400 storage array, enterprise storage, GridIron, hybrid, InfoStor, K2, Kaminario, legacy storage vendors, NetApp, OLTP, Online Transaction Processing, reads, replication, snapshot, SSD, storage controller, synchronization, TurboCharger, writes
Posted in Hybrid Storage | No Comments »
Posted October 4th, 2012
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Performance is serious business, not a game
KAMINARIO RESPONDS TO COMMENTS FROM A STORY IN THE REGISTER
By Shachar Fienblit
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Editor’s note: Chris Mellor, of The Register, wrote an article about the K2 exceeding two million IOPS last Monday. Violin’s Jon Bennett posted a comment on the article. Kaminario’s response follows.
The comments written by Violin’s CTO mix apples and oranges from multiple benchmark data points resulting in false conclusions. Let me clearly and factually present the truth.
First, Kaminario did two different benchmarks: an audited SPC-1 benchmark designed to give customers an apples to apples comparison of vendor performance with an industry standard workload, and a second benchmark based on an IOmeter-based random read only workload identical to what Violin promoted at VMworld.
SPC-1, as the market knows, is a well-defined benchmark and has a very high write component (2/3). The result from that benchmark was 1.2M SPC-1 IOPS at a cost of $0.40 per SPC-1 IOP. World records! Clear, factual, audited. Violin is welcome to join us in the peer review of SPC-1 and do the benchmark.
Read the rest of this entry »
Tags:application performance, Database Performance, Flash SSD, I/O bottlenecks, IOPS, K2, OLTP, SSD, Storage Performance
Posted in SSD Storage Performance | No Comments »
Posted September 24th, 2012
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Kaminario Customer Comments on User Experience
TECHTARGET WRITES ABOUT TESTAMERICA’S K2 SOLUTION
By Gareth Taube, Vice President Marketing, Kaminario
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Last summer, I posted a blog about Kaminario customer TestAmerica. The company analyzes natural resources such as gas, air and water for contaminants and purity. They deployed a K2 to consolidate about 25 databases to reduce the time required for managers to produce analytical reports.
Nick Mahmood, TestAmerica’s VP of IT, was kind enough to speak with a TechTarget reporter about his user experience. Searchsolidstatestorage published the resulting story on Friday.
According to the article, Mahmood said, “”Being early adopters, you are skeptical about getting into a new product. But we are pretty happy with what we have seen [with the K2].”
Deployment of the K2 has sped TestAmerica’s batch data processing by 50 percent and has improved the time for retrieving customer data by 75 percent.
With the K2 humming along, Mahmood said he is planning the company’s first disaster recovery site and aims to use another K2 to support disaster recovery operations.
Incidentally, Kaminario published a case study that contains additional details about TestAmerica’s K2 implementation.
Tags:application performance, Database Performance, Flash SSD, IOPS, K2, Kaminario, OLTP, Online Transaction Processing, searchsolidstatestorage.com, SSD, Storage Performance, TechTarget, TestAmerica
Posted in Oracle Database Performance | No Comments »
Posted September 16th, 2012
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It’s the Architecture, Stupid
ALL ENTERPRISE SSD SOLUTIONS ARE NOT CREATED EQUAL.
By Gareth Taube, Vice President Marketing, Kaminario
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If you’re looking for a concise, level headed analysis of the enterprise SSD market checkout Benjamin Woo’s August 31 Neuralytix report entitled Full Spectrum Solid State. It presents a nice breakdown of enterprise SSD solution form factors, dividing the market into:
- PCI expansion boards
- Solid State storage arrays without advanced data management (which he calls SSSD’s)
- Inline storage network cache’s
- Solid State arrays with advanced data management services (which he calls SSSS’s)
- Cache extensions for storage system controllers
- Disk drive packages meant to replace legacy disk drives
The report further divides the market into solutions that are “north” of the storage network (PCI boards and SSD arrays without advanced data management) and those that are “south” of the storage network (the rest) and gives a clear, intelligent evaluation of the pros, cons, and best uses of each.
Kaminario falls into the SSSS category, according to Woo, which he says has the most potential for challenging the hard disk storage systems market head on, especially given the TCO and data center real estate benefits of flash arrays.
Read the rest of this entry »
Tags:advanced data management, Benjamin Woo, big data, cache extensions, Full Spectrum Solid State, I/O, Kaminario, legacy disk drives, NetApp, network cache, Neuralytix, PCI expansion boards, Scalability, solid state storage arrays, SPEAR, SSD, ssd form factors, SSSD, SSSS
Posted in SSD Architectures | No Comments »
Posted September 10th, 2012
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COMPUTERWORLD Highlights SSD Users
TheInfoPro Studies SSD Adoption Growth
By Gareth Taube, Vice President Marketing, Kaminario
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While catching up on some end-of-the-summer reading, one story by Lucas Mearian in Computerworld caught my attention. It highlighted end-user research conducted by TheInfoPro about SSDs and featured three customer case studies.
Survey says —TheInfoPro survey of 255 IT managers and storage admins says that 37 percent of respondents indicated that they plan to deploy SSD technology, up 30 percent from a similar 2011 survey. The same study found that four percent of respondents plan to buy an all-Flash array (in six to 18 months).
It wouldn’t surprise me at all if the percentage of respondents that say they plan to purchase an all-Flash array in a 2013 survey gets a similar boost that the general SSD purchase question received in 2012. Many businesses are still figuring out their transition-to-SSD strategy. If the commitment isn’t there yet to SSD, it seems reasonable that a commitment to a particular type of SSD solution would be less common. A recent SPC-1 benchmark performance report has validated that if a system such as the Kaminario K2 is built from the ground up to maximize SSD performance then you gain in performance, price/performance and sustained performance. As George Crump from Storage-Switzerland concludes from these results:
Read the rest of this entry »
Tags:All Flash Array, ComputerWorld, Flash SSD, Kaminario, Kaminario K2, OLTP, Online Transaction Processing, solid-state SAN storage, SSD, Storage Performance
Posted in SSD Case Studies | No Comments »
Posted September 4th, 2012
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Kaminario K2 Gains VMware Ready Certification
KAMINARIO K2 SOLID-STATE SAN READY FOR VMWARE ESXi ENVIRONMENTS
By Kaminario
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Tags:application performance, Database Performance, Flash, Flash SSD, I/O bottlenecks, K2, Kaminario, Solid State Storage, solid-state SAN storage, SSD, Storage Performance, virtualized envionments, VMware ESXi, VMware Ready
Posted in Virtualization | No Comments »
Posted August 20th, 2012
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Welcome to the Data Protection Party
SSD SPOTLIGHT NOT JUST FOR SPEED
By Gareth Taube, Vice President Marketing, Kaminario
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Aside from enabling SPC-1 benchmark record-breaking speed, Kaminario’s big product focus has been on developing data protection features on its K2 solid-state SAN solutions. Last February, we announced DataProtect that provides users with advanced functionality including high-volume snapshots and non-disruptive operations.
News hit last week that Violin Memory is integrating Symantec’s data management tools with Violin’s memory operating system (vMOS). It is good news for data protection to be in the SSD spotlight. Speed may be sexy but confidence that you won’t lose your data is equally if not more important. SSDs have to be at least as reliable as HDDs for many data center managers to even consider adopting them for their most critical business applications. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags:data protection, Flash SSD, HDD, HDD data protection, high availability, K2, Kaminario, Scale-out performance Storage Architecture, solid-state SAN storage, SPC-1 benchmark, SPEAR, SSD, Symantec, Violin Memory
Posted in Data Protection | No Comments »
Posted August 15th, 2012
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Single-Storage-Vendor Solution or Best of Breed?
BEST OF BREED CAN PLAY WELL WITH OTHERS
By Gareth Taube, Vice President Marketing, Kaminario
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In a recent blog entitled Pros and Cons of Buying a One-Vendor Storage Solution, Randy Kerns outlines the arguments for and against sticking with one storage vendor. Pro arguments include the simplicity of dealing with a single storage vendor vs. several for troubleshooting and support and the reduced costs that may come from rolling the price of a new technology into a bigger volume purchase. He also argues that single-vendor solutions have the advantage of easy integration. For cons, Kerns simply mentions possible higher cost from a more expensive vendor and the possibility of not getting the best solution. He concludes by predicting that single vendor solutions will predominate, thanks to lower complexity and reduced training and administration costs.
Read the rest of this entry »
Tags:ActiveTrail, best of breed, Compellent, Dell, EMC, HP, IBM, Kaminario, mission critical, NetApp, PedMed, performance bottleneck, Randy Kerns, revenue producing, SAN, single storage vendor, SPC-1, SSD, Test America
Posted in SSD Storage Performance | No Comments »
