* Fusion-io releases its ioDrive PCI Experss adapter
Start-up Fusion-io this week announced a storage adapter that takes the place of expensive Fibre Channel storage-area networks.
The ioDrive is a PCI Express adapter that installs in the host computer. It replaces RAID adapters and has an upward capacity of 320GB. The ioDrive uses non-volatile NAND flash memory for its drives and according to company claims it can perform at as much as 125,000 I/Os per second. The access time for random reads and writes is – if you believe Fusion-io’s claims – 220 times faster than that of a disk drive. And for power consumption, the ioDrive consumes three orders of magnitude less than a traditional hard drive.
The ioDrive is intended to be used for transaction and performance I/O intensive environments. It may host databases or other business critical data such as Web servers, data warehousing or simulation and visualization.
Multiple ioDrives can be installed in the server, where they can sustain as much as 2.8Gbps bandwidth, according to company claims.
The ioDrives presently run in Red Hat Linux and SUSE Linux environments; compatibility with Microsoft Windows XP, Vista, Server 2003 and 2008 as well as Mac OS X is expect in the second half of this year.
Fusion-io’s NAND flash implementation tracks at about $30 per gigabyte, much less than SDRAM.
Fusion-io was founded in 2006 by David Flynn, CTO, and Rick White, chief marketing officer. The company is headed up by Don Basile, who serves as CEO and chairman. Basile comes to Fusion-io from Raza Foundries, a broadband networking investment company. The company is funded by New Enterprise Associates for $19 million.
The ioDrive is available now starting at $2,400 for an 80GB drive, $4,800 for a 160GB drive and $8900 for a 320GB drive.
