Fusion-io Sets the Stage for the All-Flash Data Center

fusion-ioscale

Fusion-io has introduced ioScale (pictured above), which features pricing that promises to make the all-Flash data center more accessible. (Photo: Fusion-io)

At the Open Compute Summit in Santa Clara Wednesday Fusion-io (FIO) announced its newest product line, Fusion ioScale.  Aimed at the hyperscale and cloud companies, ioScale provides up to 3.2 terabytes of ioMemory capacity, and is available to order in a minimum of one hundred units. Pricing starts as low as $3.89 per gigabyte, with increasing discounts based on volume.

“By making ioScale available to growing webscale and emerging cloud companies, Fusion-io is at the forefront of the transition to the all-flash hyperscale datacenter, powered by open software defined solutions,” said David Flynn, Fusion-io CEO and Chairman. “Hyperscale companies are an entirely different market with different needs compared to enterprise organizations. Fusion ioScale has been specifically designed with the input of existing hyperscale market leaders to maximize the simplicity of the all-flash datacenter and meet the unique needs of webscale customers."

Evolving from past Fusion-io products, ioScale targets the unique needs of webscale and emerging cloud companies. "We’ve been involved in all stages of the product’s research and development, and we’re excited by this technology’s potential to help the industry meet its rapidly growing storage demands,” said Frank Frankovsky, Chairman of the Open Compute Foundatio

Fusion ioScale contains up to 3.2TB of capacity on a single half length PCIe slot, enabling a small form factor server to reliably scale to 12.8TB or more. Servers that support UEFI (Unified Extensible n.Firmware Interface)  can boot from ioScale, further eliminating the need for RAID controllers or disk infrastructure. It also includes enterprise reliability with the Self-Healing, Wear Management, and Predictive Monitoring capabilities of Fusion ioMemory. ioScale is compatible with the Fusion ioMemory software development kit (SDK) to everage application programming interfaces (APIs) like Atomic Writes and directFS permitting applications to run natively on flash.

“Hyperscale companies architect their infrastructure with bare bones servers and open source software that scales-out cost-effectively in the hundreds and thousands,” said David Floyer, Wikibon Chief Technology Officer. "These organizations focus on capital expenses; this is very different from the operating expense focus seen at traditional enterprises that implement feature-rich infrastructure with long lifespans.

"The data requirements of these hyperscale companies are growing astronomically fast, much faster than the enterprise market," said Floyer. "The design of the ioScale flash memory products will enable Fusion-io to reach a broader range of webscale and cloud companies, including the emerging hyperscale leaders who will power the services consumers will enjoy in an always-connected world.”