Content management applications cover a broad range of use cases, everything from a document management focus like SharePoint to software content management such as Perforce. Regardless of the use case the goal is superior collaboration and organizational efficiency for groups of people. Content Management deployments face significant challenges with performance bottlenecks, slow response times, and cost of hardware. Often these issues can be traced to the inherent limitations of traditional disk-based storage.

Violin Memory Arrays are high capacity storage systems based on flash memory that provide superior performance and greater end-user satisfaction. Low latency flash eliminates slow data access ensuring SLA’s are met and end-users are not frustrated. As content grows, Violin provides the scalability to meet changing needs. A single 3U enclosure has 40TB of capacity and a full rack scales to over 140TB. Unlike SSD’s or single server flash cards, Violin Memory Arrays are designed to be shared network storage providing the large scale collaboration capabilities these solutions are designed for. Reliability and data protection are ensured with Violin’s unique vRAID technology and fit seamlessly with existing backup and recovery tools. Memory Array performance ensures Recovery Time Objectives (RTO) and Recovery Point Objectives (RPO) can be met consistently.

Violin Memory Arrays offer the following benefits:

• Fast access to documents and content for high end-user satisfaction
• Scalability to keep pace with content growth
• Network-based storage for efficient collaboration
• Fast indexing to support lightning-quick search.
• Data protection and seamless fit with backup and restore

Performance and Scalability Characteristics:

• Up to 40TB in a single 3U enclosure, over 140TB in a rack
• 250,000 IOPS from a single Memory Array
• Low latency – under 250 µsec
• Network attached via Fiber Channel (FC) or 10 Gigabit Ethernet (GbE)
• Unique flash vRAID for reliability and data protection

Violin Memory in Action: Perforce Software

At the Perforce User Conference in June 2011 the Perforce Performance Lab team demonstrated their ability to scale and meet the needs of the most demanding enterprise environments. Using an HP DL580 server and A Violin 3200 Memory Array they created a solution dubbed the “Dream Machine”. In the words of the Perforce team:

“I/O that provides the lowest amount of latency is going to be ideal for you.  While in the past 15k RPM drives were the champions of low latency access, today the tendency is moving towards enterprise grade flash Memory Arrays.” – Tim Brazil, Perforce Software

“What we used to see as good numbers on the old ‘dated’ hardware vs. what we are seeing now is a whole new ballgame… No explanation really necessary – old vs. new, ‘do you want to be the tall bars or small bars’” – Tim Brazil, Perforce Software

“If you pick an average salary in a typical 8 hour day, a 500 user site would save $4,800 per day in lost productivity and that would allow you to pay for a Terabyte of Violin Memory storage in 10 days… That’s a no-brainer!” – Michael Shields, Perforce Software Performance Lab Manager

Read more about the case study and see the dream machine video on our customers page.

Learn more about Violin Memory Arrays