Density Dynamics just announced that the Jet.io drive, their only product, has been certified for compliance with Underwriters Laboratories (UL60950-1) and FCC (Part 15 class B) standards. Unfortunately for them, it appears to be too little, too late.
Their Jet.IO drive builds on what, at first glance, looks like a great idea: using RAM for primary storage, and a flash drive for persistent storage in case of power failures. This allows the drive to have even better performance than a purely flash-based drive.
The main problem is that it is too small, and too late. The drive offers “up to 500.000 iops” (IO/s per second); but that’s for a 16 GB drive! There’s also a 32 GB version, but that’s the entire product portfolio that Density Dynamics offers. The main advantage is that the drive plugs into a standard 3.5 inch drive slot.
But the competition is heating up, and flash drives that reach 40.000 iops are already pretty standard. These can be obtained in 2.5 inch form factors, that can also be used as drop-in replacements for “normal” hard disks, and have the advantage of being available in much larger sizes.
And users looking for extremes in storage speeds generally don’t mind using non-standard form factors; FusionIO offers a drive that gets up to 200.000 iops, and if you need larger storage systems Texas Memory Systems has a 450 gigabyte internal unit that reaches a respectable 120.000 iops. If extreme speed is needed, TMS also has an external RAM-based unit, and other vendors offer similar technologies.
To summarize: there are several alternatives available. Users that want to improve random I/O speed or sequential read/write speeds can just choose a 2.5 inch flash drive. It you need something larger than 32 GB, the Density Dynamics solution is out altogether. If you need the absolute fastest speed, you choose a RamSan unit that has the added advantages of larger size and being shareable via a SAN. All things considered I think the niche that Density Dynamics is targeting with this product is simply too small to build your entire company upon, no matter how good that product might be.
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