Violin and Microsoft Jointly Develop a High-Performance, All-Flash...

[A Guy]

Violin and Microsoft Jointly Develop a High-Performance, All-Flash Enterprise Storage Appliance Powered by Windows Storage Server 2012 R2

Violin Memory today announced the Violin Windows Flash Array (WFA)—an all-flash, high-performance storage appliance powered by Windows Storage Server 2012 R2.

Here are the highlights:
The WFA is the result of a joint development effort between Violin and Microsoft, which spent more than 18 months working together on software optimizations to get the most out of the array’s unique performance profile.

It takes advantage of SMB Direct (SMB 3.0 over RDMA) and Violin’s flash memory optimization algorithms to deliver an ideal combination of low latency, high IOPS, and low CPU use.

Performance provided by the WFA makes it an ideal storage platform for major enterprise workloads, including Microsoft SQL Server, Hyper-V virtualization, and Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI).

If you’re not already coveting a Windows Flash Array for your own IT infrastructure, let me put things another way: This incredibly powerful storage appliance delivers 70 terabytes (TB) raw storage capacity, nominal latencies of less than 500-microseconds, and more than 750,000 4K IOPS—all in a 3U, dual-node cluster that draws about 1500 watts and can be deployed in as little as 30 minutes, without an advanced degree in storage networking!

Now that I’ve covered the highlights, let’s take a deeper look at the WFA’s architecture, performance under key workloads, and other enterprise-ready attributes.

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A Guy