Should you use flash solid state drive (SSD) storage as a pretend hard disk drive or as a cache attached to a server’s main bus?
These are two approaches that have emerged about using flash in large scale storage applications. EMC, with the help of STEC, says to use drop-in Fibre-Channel-attached SSDs, which function like very, very fast Fibre Channel hard drives as a small but significant tier zero of storage in large disk drive arrays. IBM, with the help of Fusion-io, thinks you should provide a PCI-e link to separate SSD storage as demonstrated in Project Quicksilver with 4TB of Fusion flash.
Because of its PCI-e bus connect Fusion-io has been thought of as server-accelerating flash and not storage array flash. Not so, says Rick White, one of the three founders of Fusion-io and its chief marketing officer. In the Quicksilver project the flash is a storage array but is connected to an IBM x server’s bus. The x server functions, in effect, as a storage array controller.
Here is an interview, where Rick White sets out Fusion-io’s approach in the server-vs-storage and SSD connection areas.
