Violin Capacity Flash technology is system level solution to enabling high density MLC flash to efficiently support enterprise performance and reliability requirements.

Massive Density
A single Violin 3140 supports over 10,000 Flash devices and 40TB of flash storage. With the highly efficient Hardware vRAID, over 30TB of usable Flash is provided in 3U.

Hardware-based Flash Control
Other SSDs use processors and software to perform RAID, multi-bit ECC correction, page mapping and garbage collection. Violin implements these functions in hardware to reduce latency and dramatically increase sustained random Read & Write IOPS. A typical Violin 3100 system supports over 150K sustained 4K IOPS (any mix, random or sequential)) with RAID protection.

5 Year Lifetime
Unlike MLC SSDs which can wear out in less than 1 year of continuous use, the Violin Capacity Flash array is designed to distribute wear across the whole 40TB of flash and minimize write amplification. The result is 5 year lifetime that is covered under the standard maintenance agreements with no risk to the system owner.

Efficient flash vRAID
Violin’s patent-pending vRAID technology, designed specifically to enhance NAND Flash system performance, provides full RAID data protection and a fundamentally more efficient and higher performance solution. Existing RAID 5 & 6 solutions rely on Read-Modify-Write operations that are unsuited to Flash. Unlike RAID 1 (50% efficient) solutions, Violin’s vRAID enables 80% usable capacity, IOPS and bandwidth.

Violin’s vRAID guarantees spike-free latency under load by making sure there aren’t any reads blocked by erases which can be 10ms or more in MLC Flash.

“Having a close relationship with a NAND supplier is one of the critical elements for multi-petabyte deliveries to the enterprise. Only by knowing in exacting details how the MLC chip works can the controller designer optimize price, performance and reliability.”

George Crump, Lead Analyst with Storage Switzerland