Xiotech's Hybrid ISE and Storage Performance

Everything gets better with computers, every year. For the same price or less we can get a bigger screen, a faster processor, more memory, more storage, a faster connection, a lighter device, or a combination of the above. We are so used to this, we don't question it or think about it. It's just the way things are.

HOWEVER, there is a BIG, FAT exception to this generally wonderful trend. The exception is something most consumers don't think about, but it's having an increasingly dramatic impact on the world of IT professionals. In a world of increasing expectations, the thing that is getting inexorably WORSE every year is: storage performance.

Worsening Storage Performance: the Market Speaks

It's pretty easy to tell that storage performance is going to the dogs by noticing the following:

• The hottest subject in the storage world is solid state disk (SSD). What is SSD? In a nutshell, it is a new version of storage that is WAY more expensive than regular storage. Since when do people get excited about something that's more expensive than everything else? Simple: it's faster. A lot faster. If people didn't have a speed problem, they wouldn't pay a micro-second's attention to this expensive new form of storage.
• One of the hottest companies in storage today is Fusion IO, which delivers SSD in a server card. Of course Fusion IO's products are incredibly expensive (you already knew that). You have to open up your server to plug it in. You have to change your application to take advantage of it. When the server breaks, the storage is inaccessible. But it's fast! Fusion IO's story could only sell to buyers who are desperate for performance. There must be a lot of them out there.
• Data center managers are busily virtualizing their servers, and getting major cost and managability benefits from running applications on a smaller number of physical servers. But they are avoiding virtualizing their most important, mission-critical applications. Why? Because running applications on a smaller number of servers concentrates their demands for storage, making a really bad problem even worse.
• Traditionally, the unit of measure for storage is (of course) how much it stores, the number of GB or TB it holds. But buyers are increasingly buying more capacity than they want in order to get the performance that they need. There is talk of "short stroking" and "over-provisioning." Performance used to be a given in storage; now you have to really pay attention.

From the way people are acting and the market is evolving, it is safe to conclude that, contrary to everything else in the world of computing, storage performance is swirling its way down the toilet.

Worsening Storage Performance: the Fundamentals

In a world of constant improvement, why is storage performance alone the stand-out? The reasons are simple:

• While each individual disk holds more data than it did years ago, its ability to access the data has only improved a little. It's as though storage rooms were doubling in size every year, but the designers kept putting the same dinky one-person-at-a-time doors on them. Sure, any one room stores more and more stuff, but you can't put stuff in or take stuff out any faster than before, so what's the point? Every time the room gets bigger but the door stays the same, the storage performance problem gets worse.
• While servers have advanced to nicely scalable blade formats, storage systems continue to be designed as huge monolithic, mainframe-like behemoths. It's easy to grow the capacity of mainframe-like storage systems, but what you'd really like is a blade format, so that when you added capacity, you added performance so you could actually use the added storage.

Worsening Storage Performance: the Holy Grail

What would solve the problem? How about:

• A blade format for storage, so that when you added capacity, you added the performance required to actually use it.
• A seamless hybrid of SSD and traditional storage, so that you could get the capacity and the performance you need at a price you can afford.
• A real storage format and interface (unlike a server board) so you can just plug it in and go.
• A real set of storage features like (replication and fail-over) so you're not taking a step backwards.
• While we're dreaming here, why not throw in dramatically better reliability, density, power consumption and managability than any product on the market?

OK, storage gurus, those are your specs. That's what the market would really like to have.

Worsening Storage Performance: The Holy Grail is the Xiotech Hybrid ISE!

There's nothing more to say here. There is a problem. Everyone in the industry knows it. It shows in market trends. It makes sense in terms of fundamentals. What a great solution would be is obvious. The only remaining questions should be are: does the hybrid ISE exist? Does it meet the requirements listed above?

Yes, the hybrid ISE meets the above description. The hybrid ISE is currently in limited engineering release, and is being shipped to the companies at the head of a rapidly growing list of early-adopter customers. It's built on the solid foundation of thousands of ISE blades already in the field. It contains dozens of innovations to make it all work the way customers want it to work: simple, fast, and affordable.

• How simple? It plugs into the same plug storage normally plugs into. No changes to applications or anything else required.
• How fast? Depending on the application, 4 to 10 times faster than normal spinning storage. That is a VERY large fraction of the speed of SSD-only solutions, plenty of speed for most needs.
• How affordable? Roughly a 1/3 premium over pure spinning storage. VERY affordable.
  

Yes, I'm biased, as I have disclosed before. But the "bias" comes from insider information, and I can tell you that this is a rocketship in lift-off mode.