Larry,
This isn't a new concept. Several other suppliers have offered SSD or DRAM-based storage systems for quite some time. I've written about a few of them over on Virtually Speaking.
Dan K
Teradata on Monday launched a data warehouse appliance that puts information tiering on autopilo
t as it is shuttled between solid state and hard disk drives.
The appliance, the Active EDW 6680, comes in four flavors that depend on the mix of SSD storage involved. Generally speaking, active data that needs to be accessed in real-time resides on SSD, which can be pricey, while information for archives resides on cheaper traditional drives.
For instance, sensor data may reside on SSD while less sensitive information resides on hard disk drives. Teradata’s system evaluates data and puts it in SSD or hard disk based on its characteristics.
Teradata’s 6680 appliance is designed to migrate data between drive types to bolster performance. The company also rolled out an Active EDW 6650 appliance that uses hard disk drives and can be upgraded to solid state later.
With the 6680, Teradata is looking to minimize manual data management for advanced analytics and use SSD to save data warehouse space. Teradata reckons that one SSD can replace 22 hard drives.
The 6680 scales from seven TB to 36 petabytes (PB) and uses LSI Engenio storage arrays for HDDs. The solid state storage is provided by Pliant Technologies.
Here’s a look at the various configurations for Teradata’s 6680:
Scott Gnau, chief development officer at Teradata, said that the company’s research found that less than 20 percent of its customers’ data is “hot” and needs SSD. With the 6680, Teradata was looking to optimize price for performance and take away data management chores. “The idea is that you can set it and forget it. We didn’t want to give admins a lot of dials and levers to pull so that there’s another job,” said Gnau.
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