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Texas Memory SSD Breaks Speed, Capacity Record

‘Massive 4U SSD can sustain 600,000 IOPS.’ -

Solid state drives (SSDs) are being eyed as the future of enterprise data storage for the improvements in speed, reliability and energy savings they offer. SSDs for consumers are small devices very similar in size and shape to the traditional hard drive used in computer systems.

The SSD in an enterprise environment often takes on a different form factor though and the latest of these enterprise SSDs is from Texas Memory. Texas Memory says that its RamSan-440 can sustain a record setting 600,000 IOPS (input/outputs per second) and can be had with capacities of 256GB and 512GB.

The available storage space is a record for RAM-based SSDs. EWeek reports that the RamSan-440 is also the first SSD to use NAND flash modules in a RAID configuration for data backup. The SSD also uses proprietary technology from Texas Memory called IO² (Instant-On Input-Output) that improves availability by making data requested from users or applications available instantly when the system is on.

The RamSan-440 uses DDR2 RAM, reports eWeek, and it can sustain 4Gbps random read and write speed with a latency of under 15 ms. The device is in a 4U rack mount chassis and can be attached via SAN or directly attached via up to eight 4Gbps Fibre Channel ports.

Data backup is accomplished using RAID protected flash memory modules. Backup is done continuously to the internal flash modules with little impact on system performance. Pricing information is unknown, but considering that a ”cheap” consumer SSD with 128GB is right at $500, the RamSan-440 will cost a pretty penny.

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