Hybrid Object Storage, Reliable Memory and Next Gen Fusion

Several new developments in digital storage devices meant for data center and enterprise application are enabling scale-out object storage as well as higher performance applications. In this piece we will examine hybrid object storage and compute devices from Toshiba , SanDisk extensions of the Fusion PCIe products that it acquired and new high reliability and high performance HDDs and SSDs from HGST.

Toshiba jointed Seagate and Western Digital as storage device manufacturers who are moving to supplying Ethernet-based object storage systems as well as conventional digital storage devices. The Storage Products Unit of Toshiba America Electronic Components announced key value-based scale-out object storage offerings. In late 2013 Seagate announced their Kinetic HDD and Western Digital announced their own Ethernet interface HDD in 2014.

One of the Toshiba new object storage products is unusual in that it combines solid state drives and large capacity 2.5-inch hard disk drives in a 3.5-inch form factor that can offer high performance as well as lower cost high capacity storage. In addition to the storage devices, this package includes Ethernet connectivity and 64-bit microcomputer with an open-source Linux platform running software-defined storage applications.

The other product from Toshiba is an Ethernet based HDD-only product that used shingled magnetic recording (SMR) to increase storage capacity for archival and cold storage applications. Note that SMR has additional write overhead and is best used for write-once or read intensive applications. There was no mention in the release when these Toshiba products would be available for volume shipment to customers.

In other news SanDisk introduced its next generation Fusion ioMemory PCIe Application Accelerators for boosting data center performance. The company reports that this refresh of the Fusion ioMemory product uses SanDisk NDND flash and Virtual Storage Layer (VSL0 data access acceleration software for a 4X price and performance improvement and a 61% reduction in list price over the previous generation Fusion ioDrive 2 product.

The Fusion ioMemory products include PCIe cards as well as storage for HP and Cisco blade servers. The cards can be paried with SanDisk’s FlashSoft caching software that can reduce I/O latency in VMware and other server environments.

HGST (a division of Western Digital) announced that their helium-filled HDDs have achieved field reliability of 2.5 million hours mean time between failures (MTBF). They also said that their Ultrastar 12 Gbp/s SAS SSDs are also rated for 2.5 M hours MTBF. HGST storage devices have long been recognized as usually providing exceptional levels of reliability both in client and enterprise environments. The new claims of HDD and SSD low failure rates continue that tradition.

HGST also announced that they are shipping NVMe compliant PCIe SSDs for cloud and enterprise storage applications. These high performance products are geared towards mission-critical data center workloads, such as large databases. HGST says that these SSDs can be combined with HGST server software such as their Flash Software Suite and HGST Device Manager for a high performance and reliable server-side Flash platform solution.

While flash memory products continue to find more applications in accelerating data center and enterprise applications, reliable HDD and HDD/SSD hybrid systems are enabling combinations of high performance from flash with lower cost HDD storage. Ethernet-based storage devices are now available from all the major HDD manufacturers and should lead to a new generation of object-based storage systems.