SYSTEMS

Fusion-io, the leader in enterprise solid-state architecture and high-performance I/O solutions, today announced full-chip redundancy on its first product, the ioDrive. The company integrates a dedicated NAND Flash chip on its PCIe card, which serves as a XOR parity chip, eliminating data loss due to chip failures and extending the usable lifetime of the card. Fusion-io is the first company to bring RAID class redundancy and reliability using “Flashback” Protection, down to the card level – the NAND Flash chips on its ioDrive PCIe card contain an innovative storage architecture that enables it to deliver the performance of a storage area network (SAN) at a fraction of the power, size and cost of traditional disk arrays, and also now features chip-level protection. Enterprises have long sought to take advantage of the speed, size, low-power and high-performance of NAND Flash because of its potential to change the way they manage large amounts of active data. The barrier they have faced is the reliability of the medium. Fusion-io has eliminated this barrier by designing a revolutionary self-healing technology in to the ioDrive controller that is capable of instantaneously restoring, correcting and resurrecting lost data in the flash-based storage sub-system. This is accomplished by using an advanced bit error correction, proactive data integrity monitoring of stored data and now, the addition of a dedicated chip to repair failed devices. “Our customers deserve the best, most reliable SSD the market can offer,” said Don Basile, chairman and CEO, Fusion-io. “What we’re providing our customers with Flashback Protection on the ioDrive, is a new level of assurance that should a chip fail, their important data will be recovered instantaneously and without a loss in performance or capacity.” Flashback on the ioDrive offers customers: * Enhanced Data reliability with added RAID 5-like spare parity chip * Improved Read/Write Performance peaking at 800 MB/s * Enhanced field upgradeability * 20% more raw capacity for enhanced wear leveling The ioDrive is the industry's first NAND-based enterprise storage solution that provides access rates comparable to DRAM, with storage capacity on par with disks, enabling it to improve both memory capacity and storage performance. Given its performance and dual functionality, the ioDrive has the potential to reduce the need for enterprises to buy expensive, high performance Fibre channel disks, switches, RAID controllers, HBAs, exotic disks, caching appliances, excessive cabling or custom software, eliminating application I/O bottlenecks even during peak loads. Pricing and Availability The ioDrive with Flashback, with its enhanced reliability and increased raw capacity is currently available at its original cost of $2400 for 80 GB, $4800 for 160 GB and $8900 for 320 GB. For more information, please visit its Web site.