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IBM Server Side Storage I/O SSD Flash Cache Software

As I often say, the best server storage I/O or IOP is the one that you do not have to do. The second best storage I/O or IOP is the one with least impact or that can be done in a cost-effective way. Likewise the question is not if solid-state device (SSD) including nand flash are in your future, rather when, where, why, with what, how much along with from whom. Also location matters when it comes to SSD including nand flash with different environments and applications leveraging different placement (locality) options, not to mention how much performance do you need vs. want?

As part of their $1 billion USD (to be spent over three years, or $333.3333 million per year) flash ahead initiative IBM has announced their Flash Cache Storage Accelerator (FCSA) server software. While IBM did not use the term, (congratulations and thank you btw) some creative marketer might want to try calling this Software Defined Cache (SDC) or Software Defined SSD (SDSSD) which if that occurs, apologies in advance ;). Keep in mind that it was about a year ago this time when IBM announced that they were acquiring SSD industry veteran Texas Memory Systems (TMS).

What was announced, introducing Flash Cache Storage Acceleration or FCSA

With this announcement of FCSA slated for customer general availability by end of August, IBM joins EMC and NetApp among other storage systems vendors who developed their own, or have collaborated on server-side IO optimization and cache software. Some of the other startup and established vendors who have IO optimization, performance acceleration and caching software include DataRam (Ramdisk), FusionIO, Infinio (NFS for VMware), Pernix (block for VMware), Proximal and SANdisk (bought flashsoft) among others.

Read more about IBM Flash Cache Software (FCSA) including various questions and perspectives in part two of this two-part post located here.

Ok, nuff said (for now)

Cheers
Gs

Greg Schulz – Author Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking (CRC Press), The Green and Virtual Data Center (CRC Press) and Resilient Storage Networks (Elsevier)