Solid-state Storage technology

Solid-state storage means using a memory-type device for mass storage, rather than spinning disk or tape. First-to-market devices are the shape of standard hard disks, so they plug easily into existing disk systems. 

IBM is making solid-state storage affordable, with innovative architectures, system and application integration, and management tools that enable effective use of solid-state storage. Solid-state technologies will continue to evolve and IBM researchers have been making significant breakthroughs. IBM will continue to bring the best implementations to our customers as innovation allows us to bring the full value of this technology to market.

• Significantly improved performance for hard-to-tune, I/O bound applications. No code changes required.
• Reduced floor space. Can be filled near 100% without performance degradation
• Faster IOPS
• Faster access times
• Reduced energy use

• Smart Data Placement — DB2 and DS8000 enables affordable use of solid-state storage technology. With less than 10% solid-state storage, Smart Data Placement can deliver over 90% of the throughput increase of all solid-state arrays; substantially reducing Capital Expenses for high performance storage solutions.
• Solid-state storage is available for all IBM server platforms. This storage can provide up to 800% improvement in back-end drive response times.

Engineers and researchers at the IBM Hursley development lab in England and the Almaden Research Center in California have set a record in storage speed, outperforming the current rate by more than 250 percent. By combining Flash solid-state technology and IBM storage virtualization technology, the researchers were able to transfer data at more than 1 million Input/Output (I/O) per second. See the Press release, Solid-state drive sets speed record, to learn more.

• IBM System Storage SAN Volume Controller SSD Support
  SAN Volume Controller (SVC) supports solid-state drives fully integrated into the SVC system. Using SVC nondisruptive migration technology, data can be moved to and from SSD as required to help optimize SSD deployment. SVC's highly-scalable architecture extends to SSDs, supporting a minimum configuration of only two drives for low cost yet scaling up to a system with 32 SSDs capable of up to 800,000 read operations per second at about 1ms response time for demanding enterprise environments..
• Solid-state technology and DS8000
  The DS8000 supports enterprise-class, tiered storage requirements with solid-state drives, fibre channel drives, and SATA drives. New performance analysis tools can help optimize data placement by identifying hot spots at the sub-volume level and can provide guidance on which drive tier to place the appropriate data.
• Solid-state Storage Direct Attach option for IBM System x
  The EXP3000 supports 50 GB SATA solid-state disk drives via the ServeRAID controller adapter installed in the System x server.
• DS5000
  IBM DS5000 Storage System features new SSD drive support that reduces power and increases performance using a high–performance architecture that delivers performance scalability in mixed workload environments.
• Solid-state storage drives
  Solid-state PCIe adapters, SATA, and USB drives.

• White Paper: Maximizing the Business Value of Information and Lowering Energy Consumption with IBM’s DS8700 - Clipper Navigator, 2010
• White Paper: IBM System z® and System Storage DS8000: Accelerating the SAP® Deposits Management Workload With Solid-State Drives, 2009
• Performance White Paper: Driving Business Value on Power Systems with Solid-State Drives, April 2009
• Redpaper: Ready to Access DB2 for z/OS Data on Solid-State Drives, 2009
• Redpaper: DS8000: Introducing Solid-State Drives, 2009
• Techdoc: IBM System Storage DS8000 with SSDs: An In-Depth Look at SSD Performance in the DS8000