The most exciting things I saw were all innovative ways to package flash and NVRAM from Micron and Viking Modular. Micron showed me the 2.5-inch PCIe SSD that Dell and HP can use in their Romley servers. They’ve squeezed the PCIe connection into the SAS/SATA connector so server vendors can make a few of their hot-swap drive slots into multi-purpose hot-swap SAS/SATA/PCIe slots with 4 x2 PCIe lanes.
Just as cool was Viking’s SATA DIMM, which packs up to 400GB of SLC or 480GB of MLC flash, onto a standard-size memory DIMM. You can plug a pair of SATADIMMs into a standard server motherboard and run SATA cables to connectors on the top. The SATADIMM will use the DIMM socket for power.
Even better, Viking’s also re-routed the SATA connections to unused pins on the DIMM connector so a blade server vendor could either install SSDs in a lot smaller space, or even cooler, set up a few dual-purpose slots that could be memory or SSD as needed. They had a cool demonstration array that packed 3.8TB of flash in a 1u box to show what vendors could do with the SATADIMM tech.
The topper was Viking’s NVRAM DIMM that lets storage system vendors use the DIIMM slots of their controllers for NVRAM. Each DIMM has 8GB of DDR3 RAM, and a daughter card with 8GB of flash, and a connector for an ultra-capacitor. When the DIMM socket loses power, the module dumps the contents of memory into the flash and retrieves it when the system powers back up.
The most exciting part of the week was when a thunder storm cell in the Dallas area spawned several tornadoes and we were all instructed to leave the press room with it’s lovely view of downtown Dallas and the grassy knoll to a windowless room while the attendees were trapped in the expo hall. Being from New York, I’m not used to natural disasters, and the video on the local news of tractor trailers flying through the air was a little unsettling. This isn’t the first time the weather has tried to kill me at SNW, as a hurricane blew through the Orlando show a few years ago.
Is SNW all it used to be? ‘fraid not. Do I wish there was one event the whole storage industry would come together at? Sure do. But SNW is the best we have, and I for one am glad I went.
The conferences come fast and furious this time of year. In a couple of weeks I’ll be speaking at the Solid State Symposium. Then May brings Interop and EMCworld.
