Behind ATTO SiliconDisk: A New Tier in the Storage Pyramid

This article is part five, the last of a multi-part series that describes the impetus and technology behind ATTO SiliconDisk RAM-based storage appliance. For more details, visit https://www.atto.com/products/silicondisk.

Industry analysts and companies in the vanguard of enterprise architecture development have recognized the performance gap between system memory and storage is growing. The performance of SSDs has improved over time but they have latencies that affect the processing of mission-critical data and have a limited lifespan, a reality that is exacerbated by the number of reads and writes when used in modern, high-I/O workloads.

High-I/O, heavy processing workloads rely on a fast storage layer for “hot” data as part of the entire processing cycle. Using DRAM connected to a 100GbE fabric in a platform engineered for this very purpose seems like a logical solution, especially for distributed environments.

The unique architecture of ATTO SiliconDisk provides breakthrough performance that is both faster and more consistent than SSD storage effectively filling the gap between RAM and the first tier of JBOFs. The features and capabilities of SiliconDisk, like ultra-low latency and infinite reads and write, combine to create storage that is quite capable and unique to the market.

Unlike other solutions available today, ATTO’s solution does not require sweeping upgrades to server hardware, no new software layers to manage and does not create instabilities. It fits anywhere in the storage fabric and, physically, requires only 1U rack space.

Companies interested in an evaluation unit are encouraged to visit ATTO’s website, atto.com, or contact ATTO directly at 1-716-691-1999