EMC World 2011: Gelsinger unveils flash-based Project Lightning technology

LAS VEGAS: Pat Gelsinger, EMC's president of information infrastructure products, has given delegates at EMC World a preview of a high-performance, energy efficient flash storage plug-in which can be used with the firm's hardware appliances.

Codenamed Project Lightning, the PCIe/flash-based server cache technology is designed to increase the speed at which data is moved, stored and cached.

Flash will be integrated with EMC FAST (Fully Automated Storage Tiering) software, to optimise data placement from the storage array into the server and accelerate performance and efficiency, explained Gelsinger.

EMC has created a dedicated flash division to identify market opportunities and create technologies, but Gelsinger maintained that the firm has not entered the server business.

"We don't sell servers per se. We're not competing with HP and IBM. Essentially everything we're selling is a server but we're not competing in the general server market," Gelsinger told journalists during a Q&A session.

The idea behind Project Lightning is not entirely new, but analysts are intrigued by the announcement.

"There are plenty of ways to address low-latency requirements with PCIe-based flash cards," Simon Robinson, research director of storage at The 451 Group, told V3.co.uk.

"But not many vendors can provide this in the context of an automated tiered storage environment that can be applied more broadly to enterprise applications."

Project Lightning is very interesting and could attract attention for certain use cases, noted Tony Lock, programme director at analyst firm Freeform Dynamics.

"However, EMC will also have to develop the management software so that the system can be used without needing highly skilled storage administrators to dedicate their already limited time to it," he said.