Density Dynamics released a new product based on their Jet.IO RAM drives. The JetX10 Acceleration Appliance bundles four Jet.IO drives, eight SAS or SATA drives and a huge amount (up to 144GB) of RAM into a single server running Windows 2008. External connectivity is provided by either FC or iSCSI over 8Gbps FC links or 10 Gbps ethernet interfaces.
This has all the signs of a rather rushed product release. The hardware looks like a standard off-the-shelf chassis, with some drives plugged in and a standard Windows OS to provide either FC or iSCSI connectivity. In fact, the amount of RAM the system can hold, 144GB, is larger than the storage capacity provided by the four Jet.IO drives that can be included. My guess is that a large part of the performance offered is due to disk caching.
The press release mentions performance “With Scalability Up To 1.000.000 IOPS“. But there are no actual performance figures available yet; the only performance info given is for the JetPod and JetNode expansion units. The highest performance number there is for a 16-drive expansion unit, reaching just over 600.000 IOPS. Since the JetX10 only includes four Jet.IO drives, you’d need at least two of the 16-drive JetNode expansion units to reach the 1.000.000 IOPS figure.
Add to that the fact that all product information on the new units is provided as low-resolution pictures that appear to be screenshots of a product brochure, including the notice that “this document is the confidential property of Density Dynamics” even though they are publishing it on the internet, and my guess is that this was a very rushed release driven by investors in the company that finally want to see sales ramp up. Whether or not this is the right way to go remains to be seen.
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