应用于企业数据中心的闪存系统

Pure Storage Inc. won the Silver award for a data-storage system that uses flash memory instead of disk drives to hold information in corporate data centers.

存储服务公司Pure Storage Inc.获得了《华尔街日报》“科技创新奖银奖，该公司发明了一种应用于企业数据中心的闪存存储系统，取代磁盘驱动器。

Pure has solved the biggest obstacle to greater adoption by companies of so-called solid-state storage, which stores data electronically instead of on disks: its high cost. The Mountain View, Calif., company did this by using lower-cost flash memory chips, combined with its own software that both improves the performance of the chips and squeezes in more data.

Pure解决了企业更大限度使用固态存储器的最大障碍：高成本问题。固态存储器是指以电子方式存储数据，而不是存到磁盘上。这家总部位于美国加州山景城(Mountain View)的公司通过将低成本闪存芯片与自己研发的软件结合在一起，成功克服了成本问题。这款该软件不仅可提高芯片性能，还能存入更多数据。

As a result, Pure says, its FlashArray storage systems cost roughly the same as comparable disk storage, while delivering flash's greater speed and efficiency. 'It could be a game changer in enterprise storage,' says Meera Sampath, an Innovation Awards judge and director of Xerox Research Centre India.

Pure说，该公司推出的FlashArray存储系统的价格与类似磁盘存储器的价格基本相同，同时闪存的速度和效率均有所提高。本届“科技创新奖评委、施乐研究中心(Xerox Research Centre)印度区主管萨姆帕斯(Meera Sampath)说，这个发明可能会改变企业存储的竞争格局。

Solid-state flash storage is increasingly being adopted by online services to deliver faster response times. It's also showing up in high-end laptop computers, such as Apple Inc.'s MacBook Pros.

为了缩短响应时间，在线网络服务越来越多地采用固态闪存。而且，苹果公司(Apple Inc.)的MacBook Pro等高端笔记本电脑也开始用固态闪存。

Most enterprises, however, still rely on mechanical disk drives to store information in their data centers. But improvements in disk-based storage haven't kept up with the dramatic increases in processor and network speeds and other advances in the data center, creating a bottleneck for data-intensive applications.

然而，大多数企业的数据中心目前仍依赖机械磁盘驱动器来存储信息。但磁盘存储器的改进并未跟上处理器和网络速度的大幅提高以及数据中心的进步步伐，这就给数据密集型应用程序造成了瓶颈。

Hybrid disk-and-flash systems deliver some performance advantages, but at a higher cost. Pure's all-flash systems address that cost problem by using a less costly form of solid-state memory, which typically doesn't have the longevity or the speed of more expensive memory, and then layering on software to get better performance from the chips. The systems also include software that eliminates redundant bits and bytes and compresses the data that remains. As a result, where a disk drive might need a terabyte of capacity to store a terabyte of data, FlashArray can save that same data in a fraction of the space.

磁盘-闪存混合系统虽可带来一些性能方面的优势，但会推高成本。Pure的这个纯闪存系统解决了成本问题。它采用价格较低的固态闪存，相比更昂贵的闪存，便宜固态闪存的寿命一般没那么长，速度也没那么快，然后，通过软件来获得更好的芯片性能。此外，这个系统还用到了可消除冗余字节且可压缩已有数据的软件。因此，磁盘驱动器可能需要TB数量级的容量来存储TB大小的数据，而FlashArray只要用其中很小一部分空间就可保存相同大小的数据。

The upshot? Pure says its FlashArray storage systems can sell for roughly the same as comparable disk storage, while delivering 10 times faster speeds, taking up one-tenth the space and using one-tenth the energy.

Pure说，FlashArray存储系统的售价与类似容量的磁盘存储器基本相当，而速度却是后者的10倍，相同的数据所占空间是后者的十分之一，所耗能量是后者的十分之一。

That means companies can run complicated data-analytics programs more quickly and on larger databases than is possible with disk or hybrid storage systems. It can also help companies handle the complexities of 'bring your own devices' policies, which rely on so-called virtual-desktop systems that put severe stress on disk-based storage.

这意味着相比磁盘或混合存储系统，企业可在更大的数据库上以更快地速度运行复杂的数据分析程序。此外，它还可帮助企业处理“自备设备(bring your own devices)政策带来的种种复杂问题。这种政策依赖所谓的“虚拟桌面系统，而该系统会给磁盘存储器带来很大压力。