New PCIe Form Factor Enables Greater PCIe SSD Adoption

Posted on: June 12, 2012

PCIe SSD’s are delivering some amazing performance numbers, which means customers are getting very high bandwidth and performance with low latency compared to other interfaces like SATA and SAS SSD’s.  The one drawback that PCIe SSDs have is the traditional card form factors which comes in HHHL (half height, half length) or the even bigger form factor a FHHL (full height, half length).  To add or swap these cards in a traditional server, you have to power down the server (basically taking it out of commission) and open up the server box and very carefully add or remove additional cards.  This can be a problem for a cloud or database environment where servers are in full utilization.  Plus, there are exposed components, and the form factor itself isn’t very rugged so it requires careful handling.

NVM Express at EMC World

Posted on: June 5, 2012

I spent the week of May 20th at EMC World, and I am still recovering!  There was so much to see and do: 42 new product announcements 13,000+ attendees 400+ breakout sessions, hands-on labs, and interactive gatherings 100+ exhibitors and sponsors A presentation screen longer than a football field A wrap-around dome screen 3D theatre, playing “The EMC Experience” This list only scratches the surface.  You need to visit http://www.emcworld.com/, and check it out for yourself. 

NVMe Tames the Digital Deluge

Posted on: April 26, 2012

The growth of digital content, currently 50 percent per year, presents a strong secular expansion opportunity for storage over the next decade.  Getting timely access to that data is essential to improving the user experience in an array of cutting edge applications.  The introduction of PCIe based SSDs has shattered the performance ceiling of legacy storage interfaces.  A PCIe interface can deliver 4GB/sec data rate and devices have demonstrated over one million IOPs on a mainstream CPU platform.  The new NVMe interface protocol is targeted at these high performance applications.  NVMe enables both a standard driver to be written for each OS and interoperability between implementations which reduces OEM qualification cycles.  NVMe frees SSDs from legacy protocol support requirements and enables the next level of performance.  Existing software investments are preserved by use of the NVMe standard drivers that are available for all the major operating systems. 

PCIe Storage for Enterprise Applications

Posted on: April 4, 2012

Oracle is a vendor of software, hardware, and integrated engineered systems with advanced system architectures that are optimized for Oracle applications from the ground up. …