Apart from the NSA...
who on earth is going to need that sort of storage capacity? That's more pr0n than has been produced since the dawn of the interwebs.
I remember when 640kb was more than enough for anyone.
The ex-SandForce flash controller guys turned all-flash-array-startup guys from Skyera are bringing another flashy product to market. And if the firm's claims are true, skyEagle could be a game-changer in the flash array world. The upcoming product, due to be unveiled today, will redefine how much flash you can cram on the …
On the face of it that may be the case, but it's more complex than that: Do these arrays have the ability to hot swap failed modules, how many PSUs do they have, what sort of caching, multichannel FC, how many ports, do they have the advanced management of HDS/EMC/IBM arrays, snapshots, replication, etc. etc.
This would be far more credible if they had actually shipped (GA) their first product, which was coincidentally announced at the Flash Memory Summit one year ago.
Even if they shipped it now, who would buy it when 10X better is 6 months off.
Next year about this time expect to hear about their 3rd gen product which is even better cheaper and faster and will be shipping the next year for sure this time.
Even if they shipped it now, who would buy it when 10X better is 6 months off.
It was ever thus. Eventually you have to bite the bullet and make that purchase safe in the knowledge that if you had waited just a few more days you could get something better cheaper. Otherwise we'd all be running 286's with 5.25 floppies and not wishing to commit to a new PC because the one coming out next week will be even better than what I could get today.
Jealous? Sounds like another storage vendor saying the grapes are sour.
Personally I think this would be revolutionary if they can accomplish this. I assume they'll have other more realistic SKUs as well for mainstream non-$_no_object deployments. Anyone from Skyera care to comment on a Sky-baby-eagle (I see additional capacity points on their website).
Also how would flash hot swap work? Are deployments protected using mirroring? That's one of the reasons why most IT shops avoid large capacity deployments / array.
FWIW power and cooling is going to be a big problems for most DC. At 800W / 1U, you are talking about ~30 to ~35 KW on power alone + ~20 to 40 KW on cooling for 1 rack. That's more power than what some of the high density servers use.
PS... I don't work for Skyera
...at Dell Enterprise Forum in San Jose, very impressive but not too many details offered. I don't recall them hosting a session, either. Scored a free pen though so they can't be all that bad, right? :)
If I'm honest, it needs more flashy lights and front-end bling. Managers and directors love SANs because of how impressive they look, let's face it. The more impressive the SAN, the more important the data. I could show more than a few IT managers I know a cardboard cutout of a VNX and as long as the lights worked, the purchase order would be signed.