Features - Storage Innovations:

TEXAS MEM SYSTEMS BOOSTS APPLICATION PERFORMANCE UP TO 25X

Texas Memory Systems Inc announced the release of its new RamSan-320 solid state disk storage unit. The RamSan-320 demonstrates a 2x-5x performance leap over existing solid state disks and a 10x-25x performance enhancement over existing RAID storage. With higher performance at a lower cost than other solid state disk units, the RamSan-320 is an attractive solution to most I/O bottlenecks where transaction and storage response times are critical. Applications that benefit include OLTP (online transaction processing), OLAP (online analytical processing), modeling and heavy-duty video servers. Typical RamSan-320 users include corporations in the financial, telecom, broadcasting and e-commerce sectors as well as government, military and research organizations.

When customers move data requiring frequent and high-performance access, such as database "hot" files, to the RamSan-320, their applications accelerate. Because the RamSan stores data in SDRAM, data reads and writes occur instantaneously. This fast access dramatically improves overall throughput and query response time. The RamSan's amazing 3,000 MB per second bandwidth and 250,000 I/Os per second mean that it can simultaneously boost performance for multiple servers.

"Our financial sector clients demand high-speed, low-risk data storage solutions. They love the RamSan's performance, value and reliability," said Chris Johnson, vice president of Storage Solutions with Dynamic Solutions International, a leading provider of storage management solutions. Johnson continued, "Texas Memory Systems has raised the bar on storage performance again by introducing another industry-leading solid state disk."

The RamSan-320 includes several exclusive features that make it the most reliable solid state disk available. While other solid state storage manufacturers use a single back-up hard drive, the RamSan-320 is the only SSD that uses a three-disk RAID back-up system, in addition to internal batteries, component redundancy and hot-swap capabilities, for added data protection. This is a significant advance in reliability for 24 X 7 data center operations with critical applications.

Texas Memory Systems has added a unique Active Backup feature that allows users to simultaneously benefit from a solid state drive's blazing fast read and write performance and from hard disk drives' secure data protection. The optional Active Backup mode uses performance not utilized by the application to constantly backup memory across three back-up hard disk drives.

"Solid state disk solutions are valued for performance rather than capacity," said Woody Hutsell, Executive vice president with Texas Memory Systems. "However, critical system applications and associated data files are growing, giving rise to larger solid state disk systems. This makes a more intelligent form of data backup essential."

Engineering advances by Texas Memory Systems have significantly reduced the cost of this high-performance storage, resulting in unprecedented value that enables IT managers to lower the total cost of owning and running data centers. A customer investing in a 16-Gigabyte RamSan-320 achieves a cost of $0.14/IOPS. In addition, this eighth-generation solid state storage system lowers IT managers' total cost of ownership by boosting application performance without the complexity and additional cost of adding servers and application software licenses.

"We were able to reduce I/O bottlenecks using RamSan solid state disks," said David Hu, System Administrator with the Bureau of Labor Statistics. "That allowed us to reduce user application wait time up to 40%."

The RamSan-320 fits seamlessly into a storage area network. It provides up to 64-Gigabytes of SDRAM storage in a single 3U rack mount chassis and is easily managed using a secure Telnet, browser interface or standard SNMP software. The RamSan-320 unit includes from two to eight 2-Gigabit Fibre Channel ports, hot-swappable disk drives and power supplies, redundant batteries and fans.

The Texas Memory Systems RamSan-320 is immediately available in USA and Canada.