back to article Violin Memory is winning flash-supply race – Quadragon™ rivals

The storage world keeps hearing how Violin Memory leads the flash array supplier race. Here's some concrete proof, courtesy of numbercruncher 451 Research. IDC's quarterly storage tracker doesn't yet reveal flash array vendor use. Absent that, TheInfoPro (a service by 451 Research) ran a storage study survey from which we …

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  1. frank fegert

    Truely interesting times in the storage game ...

    Technologically Violin seems to have caught-up on the whole FC attachment mess of its all flash arrays. Two years ago when we had Violin 3xxx and TMS 6x0 test units here, it was still as ugly as it could get, so decided to go with TMS instead. Earlier this week we saw some very promising high-level slides on the upcoming IBM/TMS products, so we too are very psyched to see how that whole flashy race will turn out ;-)

  2. Velv

    Further evidence that El Reg was subject to the higher end of scale of corporate entertainment from Violin (see comments on Manky Quadragon)

  3. unredeemed

    How is EMC in there as "In use?" It's not even available for sale yet. Unless we're talking an all flash VNX, or flash in the VNX/VMAX?

    1. Dave Nicholson

      XtremIO is in "Directed Availability". If EMC was a startup, it would be out there as an "Answer To All Of Your Prayers" product.

      Yet still, a ton of customers own and love the thing already. That should be alarming to the "high-fives in Vegas" crowd. http://storagepirates.typepad.com/blog/

      The aircraft carrier is turning into the wind...

  4. M. B.

    Is that...

    ...flash array only or does that include hybrid arrays and DAS or locally-attached flash? There are some entries that that don't make much sense given their position. Dell, for example, has an all-flash EqualLogic but I doubt enough people are buying it to make a dent in the market compared to the hybrid version. The all-flash Compellent isn't GA yet as far as I know either. And I'm pretty sure the NetApp flash pool technology for FAS filers is probably selling much hotter than the EF540.

  5. Erik (IBM)

    Source?

    Chris - which 451/TheInfoPro study did this come from? Is it "Solid state evolves storage architectures and ROIs" (https://451research.com/report-short?entityId=78389) from August or is it something else they published?

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    race is irrelevant

    facts:

    1. it's not a race

    2. if all you have is a hammer, you make sure your customers think they have nails and you sell a hammer to your customer. A lot of the vendors in the list have all kinds of tools in their toolbox. Violin doesn't.

    3. many customers buying all-flash or hybrid arrays don't need that level of performance. There isn't a lot of diagnosis going on before purchasing, but customers must have their shiny bright new toys. There are some ethical vendors out there who will actually analyse your needs before trying to sell you a box.

    4. your traditional storage vendor is probably not the place you should be looking for your entire storage needs. Put another vendor in your data centre if they have a better solution and watch how much harder your legacy vendor will work to retain your business.

  7. EricB

    Violin is top for now...

    Chris, I just saw a Gartner Chart (June 2013) that has a different order to what you have posted, you may want to visit it, the list above is wrong.

    Outside of that, sure Violin is top for now, however they just got IPO'd and I would still consider them a "start-up" which means they could get sold off at anytime. Would you trust your enterprise systems to rely on a vendor who may be there or maybe not? They also don't have World Wide Support and there is a scaling issue with their boxes, aka very niche.

    IMO, all of these fly by night flash storage companies are going to get out paced by the larger vendors, EMC, NetApp, IBM, etc... All of these new players in the field also have various downsides to their products varying from scaling issues, to support, to not being able to do simple basic storage functions like replication.

    The NetApp EF540 is considered an "IOPs Vampire", is scalable, offers basic storage functions like replication, snapshots, thinprovisioning, etc. NetApp may be lower on the list at the moment however the next few quarters should show a change in market share. Mark my words.

    and all those who left NetApp to go to Pure are in for a rude awakening when the investors at the top decide to sell off the company.

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