Fusion-io Releases ioDrive2, ioDrive2 Duo Flash Cards

Storage specialist Fusion-io announced the next evolution of its ioMemory platform for powering application acceleration and data center optimization with the release of the new ioDrive2 and ioDrive2 Duo flash drives, which offer up to 2.4TB capacity. Among the key features is a self-healing feature called Adaptive FlashBack, which provides complete chip level fault tolerance, enabling ioMemory to repair itself after a single chip or a multichip failure The MLC ioDrive2 and ioDrive2 Duo will be offered in 365GB, 785GB, 1205GB and 2.4TB capacities, beginning in late November, followed by SLC products in 400GB, 600GB and 1.2 TBcapacities, with the first product run already committed to customers and partners. Pricing for the company’s ioMemory platform starts at $5,950.

Other features include system level integration with the latest Fusion-io VSL 3.0 software subsystem, more work per unit of processing with the cut-through Fusion-io architecture, extended support for most major operating systems, including Windows, Linux, OSX, Solaris x86, ESXi 5.0 and HP-UX and field programmability, which is designed to allow IT professionals enhanced flexibility in customizing their ioMemory platform.

In a recent white paper sponsored by Fusion-io, technology analyst firm International Data Corporation (IDC) looks at how Fusion-io technology can help to overcome the inefficiencies of traditional data center infrastructures. By solving the performance problems caused by traditional disk-based storage, the IDC paper, titled "Datacenter of the Future," reported that Fusion-io products can help to address today's highly virtualized datacenter environments by delivering higher data performance, reduced operational and capital expenses, and lower power consumption.

“A new approach is necessary to address the growing problem of data center inefficiencies,” said Benjamin S. Woo, program vice president of storage and big data at IDC. “The I/O subsystem in use today was developed over 30 years ago and is no longer sufficient to serve the demands of today's growing business. Fusion’s ioMemory is a building block for next-generation data centers that provides applications fully scalable memory for accelerating throughput and drives higher-performance density and efficiency in application server platforms.”

Craigslist’s Jeremy Zawodny recently gave a presentation at the Percona Live MySQL summit in London that detailed the benefits he gained from utilizing Fusion-io in Craigslist’s MySQL database. Craigslist’s database has roughly 100 million postings in its live database, and one billion daily page views. After installing two Fusion ioDrive Duos, Craigslist reported a 50-times improvement in performance, jumping from 2,000 IOPS ((Input/Output Operations Per Second) to 40,000 IOPS, and at nearly half the wattage. In addition to this, Craigslist got rid of 11 servers, dropping from 14 down to three.

“Customers have grown to expect nothing but groundbreaking products from Fusion-io. Today, we are proud to raise the bar once more with the ioDrive2,” said David Flynn, Fusion-io CEO and chairman. “Just as many competitors gauge success by Fusion-io performance standards, we developed the ioDrive2 to outperform the original ioDrive on all measures. Companies around the world trust ioMemory to supply critical data to their trading platforms, ERP systems, virtual environments, enterprise applications and databases, and now, they can rely on the ioDrive2 to accelerate even more of the data that powers our information economy.”