Fusion-io announced the Ion Data Accelerator software, its entry into the all-solid-state array market, Monday. The software, combined with an industry-standard server and one or more of Fusion’s IoDrives, will create a storage area network (SAN) all-solid-state array. This is an important development because it allows data centers to share expensive server-centric PCIe flash drives across an entire network of physical and virtual servers.

Last year, Fusion acquired IoTurbine, which had an initial software product that provided write-through read cache functionality to servers that could keep hot data close to the server and virtual machines within it, while only accessing shared storage for colder data not retained in the cache. Prior to the acquisition, IoTurbine had plans for a more capable virtualization layer, and the Ion software represents the next generation of that capability along with Fusion’s well-developed server software stack that manages flash memory and lowers the hardware cost of Fusion-io’s IoDrives.

Fusion has been criticized because of its heavyweight, proprietary software drivers, but the Ion system, if anything, validates that approach. Because Fusion has not developed a bunch of proprietary silicon to perform flash management, it has been able to develop a wide variety of form factors for its PCIe cards that fit into the latest Cisco, Dell, and HP blade servers, as well as all of the other server form factors.
Network Computing