Originally posted by: TonyPearson

If Eskimos have 37 words for "snow", then EMC has perhaps a similar number of names for "failure". I have already covered a few of their past attempts, including [ATMOS], [Invista], and [VPLEX]. Last week, EMC introduced its latest, called XtremeIO.

But rather than focus on XtremeIO's many shortcomings, I thought it would be better to point out the highlights of IBM's All-Flash array, IBM FlashSystem.

But first, a quick story.

Two years ago, I worked the booth at [Oracle OpenWorld 2011]. After a conference attendee had visited the booths of Violin Memory and Pure Storage, he asked me why IBM did not have an all-Flash array.

Of course IBM did, and I showed him the [Storwize V7000]. For example, a 2U model with 18 SSD drives of 400GB each, configured in two RAID-5 ranks 7+P+S could offer 5.6 TB of space, running up to 250,000 IOPS at sub-millisecond response times.

Why didn't IBM advertise the Storwize V7000 as an all-Flash array? I though the question was silly at the time, since the Storwize V7000 supported SSD, 15K, 10K and 7200 RPM spinning disk, it seemed obvious that it could be configured with only SSD if you chose.

Since then, IBM has added 800GB support to the Storwize V7000, doubling the capacity. More importantly, IBM acquired Texas Memory Systems, and offers a much better all-Flash array.

Flash can be deployed in three levels. The first is in the server itself, such as with PCiE cards containing Flash chips, limited to applications running on that server only.

The second option is a hybrid disk system, that can intermix Flash-based Solid State Drives (SSD) with regular spinning hard disk drives (HDD). These can be attached to many servers.

The problem with this approach is that when Flash is packaged to pretend to be spinning disk, it undermines some of the performance benefits. Traditional disk system architectures using SCSI commands over Device adapter loops can introduce added latency.

The third fits snuggly in the middle: all-Flash arrays designed from the ground up to be only Flash.

Whereas SSD can typically achieve an I/O latency in the 300 to 1000 microseconds range, IBM FlashSystem can process I/O in the 25 to 110 microsecond range. That is a huge difference!

(FTC Disclosure: The U.S. Federal Trade Commission requires that I mention that I am an IBM employee, and that this post may be considered a paid, celebrity endorsement of both the IBM FlashSystem and IBM Storwize family of products. I have no financial interest in EMC, do not endorse the XtremeIO mentioned here, and was not paid to mention their company or products in any manner.)

Fellow blogger and IBM Master Inventor Barry Whyte has a great comparison table in his blog post [Extreme Blogging]. I thought I would add an added column for the Storwize V7000 with 18 Solid State drives.

For Wellpoint

While it is easy to show that EMC's XtremeIO does not hold a candle to IBM FlashSystems, I think it is more amusing that it is not even as good as a Storwize V7000 with SSD that IBM offered two years ago, long before [EMC acquired XtremeIO company] back in May 2012.

But don't just take my word for it, fellow blogger Robin Harris, on his StorageMojo blog, has several posts, including [EMC's Xtreme embarrassment] and [ XtremLY late XtremIO launch]. Both are worth a read.

Earlier this year, [IBM announced it is investing $1 Billion USD in Flash technology]. EMC's announcement last week shows that they are at least 18 months behind IBM in Flash technology solutions.

technorati tags: IBM, FlashSystem, Storwize V7000, Flash, Solid-State Drives, SSD, EMC, Atmos, Invista, VPLEX, XtremeIO, all-Flash array, Barry Whyte, Robin Harris, StorageMojo