Flash memory speeds up Pillar's storage system

Intel flash drives to be available with Pillar systems in June

Pillar Data Systems is jumping on the flash memory bandwagon, adding new performance capabilities to its application-aware storage system, the company is announcing Monday.
Pillar’s Axiom 600 is notable for understanding the unique requirements of specific applications and dynamically reassigning resources based on changing priorities. By adding flash-based solid state drives made by Intel, Pillar will be able to speed up the most performance-intensive tier within its system, while also lowering power consumption.
Pillar divides its system into five levels of service: premium, high, medium, low and archive. Previously, a typical premium level would be made up of Fibre Channel drives. With this latest option, the premium would consist of SATA drives and flash, with faster speeds ideal for indexing and search operations.
“SSD allows the premium band to get a significant bump in performance,” says Bob Maness, Pillar’s vice president of marketing. “Based on the operation, it is as high as 16 times faster performance.”
Using Intel X25-E solid-state technology, Pillar will provide customers up to 12 flash drives totaling 768GB of capacity. On average, read and write speeds will be four to five times faster than Fibre Channel.
Flash has been gaining prominence in corporate data centers over the past year, with vendors such as EMC, Sun, Fusion-io and Texas Memory Systems offering flash products geared toward the enterprise.
Pillar initially resisted the trend, with CEO Michael Workman saying last June that prices were too high and also that flash is best utilized in direct-attached storage, rather than in a shared network array.
Maness said Pillar changed course after seeing improvements in reliability, durability and cost. Pillar says it has not yet established a price for its own flash drives, which will be generally available in June. Without flash, a typical low-end configuration of a Pillar system costs about $80,000.

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Pillar Data Systems is jumping on the flash memory bandwagon, adding new performance capabilities to its application-aware storage system, the company is announcing Monday.
Pillar’s Axiom 600 is notable for understanding the unique requirements of specific applications and dynamically reassigning resources based on changing priorities. By adding flash-based solid state drives made by Intel, Pillar will be able to speed up the most performance-intensive tier within its system, while also lowering power consumption.
Pillar divides its system into five levels of service: premium, high, medium, low and archive. Previously, a typical premium level would be made up of Fibre Channel drives. With this latest option, the premium would consist of SATA drives and flash, with faster speeds ideal for indexing and search operations.
“SSD allows the premium band to get a significant bump in performance,” says Bob Maness, Pillar’s vice president of marketing. “Based on the operation, it is as high as 16 times faster performance.”
Using Intel X25-E solid-state technology, Pillar will provide customers up to 12 flash drives totaling 768GB of capacity. On average, read and write speeds will be four to five times faster than Fibre Channel.
Flash has been gaining prominence in corporate data centers over the past year, with vendors such as EMC, Sun, Fusion-io and Texas Memory Systems offering flash products geared toward the enterprise.
Pillar initially resisted the trend, with CEO Michael Workman saying last June that prices were too high and also that flash is best utilized in direct-attached storage, rather than in a shared network array.
Maness said Pillar changed course after seeing improvements in reliability, durability and cost. Pillar says it has not yet established a price for its own flash drives, which will be generally available in June. Without flash, a typical low-end configuration of a Pillar system costs about $80,000.

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