Behind ATTO SiliconDisk: SiliconDisk in Detail
This article is part three 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.
ATTO Technology, Inc. addresses the data-greater-than-memory problem with the introduction of ATTO SiliconDisk™, an ultra-low-latency RAM-based storage appliance that provides near-RAM level performance over an Ethernet fabric. It is truly a new tier in the storage pyramid.
With guaranteed latency in a shared Ethernet fabric, SiliconDisk stands well above current SSD solutions in speed and latency and will change the way enterprise architects design high-performance storage solutions. It is designed to provide a balance between high performance, low latency, reliability, shareability and cost. It does so with no additional software layers, no worries about data protection, and no concerns over scalability.
In SiliconDisk, ATTO integrated four channels of ultra-fast 100Gb Ethernet into a single chip along with the ATTO xCORE™ storage controller attached to high-speed RAM to eliminate any bottlenecks in performance. This architecture allows for an incredibly deterministic
600 nanosecond latency with over 35 GByte per second sustained bandwidth. Up to four host servers can be directly connected without a fabric or expand to many using an Ethernet fabric switch to share as part of a server cluster architecture.
Along with 35 GBytes per second of throughput, SiliconDisk achieves a stellar 6.4M 4K IOPS. Access times are deterministic and consistent with a latency of fewer than 600 nanoseconds. Additionally, ATTO SiliconDisk features technology that eliminates the small write penalties or latency gaps often seen on SSD-type devices.
ATTO xCORE™ hardware-based data acceleration technology features software-free I/O acceleration, handling all reads and writes with almost zero additional processing overhead. The ATTO xCORE Acceleration Processor, which is enterprise tested with thousands of current installations globally, is responsible for SiliconDisk’s ultra-low latency.
ATTO SiliconDisk can be scaled up or down and reassigned on demand. Since it is connected externally to a shared fabric, SiliconDisk supports high-availability configurations allowing every node easy access to shared data. For example, in a cluster environment experiencing a cluster node failure, another node can have quick access to stored data, delivering better resiliency.
SiliconDisk has no “per write” flash performance penalties or worry of memory wear-out. Deficiencies in write endurance have made relying on SSD storage solutions in mission-critical applications unadvisable. Device writes per day (DWPD) is an endurance calculation that NAND flash products use to predict when the device will become unreliable. SiliconDisk avoids this shortcoming with ATTO Infinite Write Endurance™.
Unique to ATTO SiliconDisk is the ATTO Insight Analytics™ application. It delivers real-time performance analytics on storage network connections, storage utilization as well as overall SiliconDisk data performance allowing administrators to quickly assess application performance issues and optimize their solutions. As an embedded feature, sophisticated timing analytics that measure down to nanosecond time-slices are fully integrated giving unprecedented performance feedback.
Insight Analytics will save time troubleshooting storage bottlenecks and administrators will see application storage utilization with extraordinary clarity. Right out of the box, Insight Analytics is an indispensable tool for creating and maintaining fully optimized high-performance environments.
ATTO SiliconDisk is an ultra-low-latency RAM-based storage appliance that provides near-RAM level performance over an Ethernet fabric. It fills the gap between RAM and storage, providing the performance needed by emerging computing loads.