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Like many of you I've been following the enterprise SSD market. I'm a desktop application developer so let me apologize in advance if the answer to my question is obvious.

Based on the specs it seems that Fusion IO's product is a better choice compared to more traditional SSDs. It just seems to me that inherently using a PCIe attached solution is going to be better than pushing ssd's behind fc or sas connections based on the bandwidth. Based on the pricing I've found it also seems that IOFusions price per GB is cheaper.

I feel like I must be missing something. When does it make more sense to use something like EMC® Symmetrix® DMX-4 flash based storage rather than using IOFusion's iosan or ioDrive based storage?

Thanks for the help!

http://www.fusionio.com/PDFs/Data_Sheet_ioDrive_Duo_v4.pdf

www.stec-inc.com/product/zeusiops.php

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Data sharing and data availability.

If multiple hosts want shared access to the same data, it is easier to do this with a shared storage infrastructure (such as a FC SAN).

If you want to be able to get to your data when a host crashes or dies, then it helps to have the data outside the host, and not captive on an internal PCIe card.

These issues will be of more or less importance for different users and applications.

And I can certainly imagine solutions, such as application-level replication, that would achieve these ends with private, FusionIO-style storage.

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This article gives a good explanation as to why IBM switched its focus from FusionIO to ZeusIOPs

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/10/15/ibm_flashes_svc/