Violin Memory

Violin Systems
Private
Founded 2005[1]
Headquarters San Jose, California, U.S.
Key people
 CEO: Mark Lewis
Owner Quantum Group of Funds
Website www.violin-systems.com

Violin Systems is a private American company based in Silicon Valley, California, that designs and manufactures computer data storage products.

Corporate history

The company was founded in 2005 as Violin Technologies by Donpaul Stephens and Jon Bennett in Iselin, New Jersey. Series A financing valued over $10 million was raised in 2010. Two more rounds of financing in 2011 raised an additional $75 million. Corporate investors included Juniper Networks and Toshiba America Electronic Components (TAEC). It was based in Mountain View, California around this time.

Series D financing of $80 million in March 2012 was led by SAP Ventures (arm of SAP AG), and included Highland Capital, GSV and others. The reported valuation was over $800 million.[2][3]

Violin Memory's initial public offering in September 2013, raised $162 million at a price of $9 a share.[4][4] Its stock price dropped to $2 a share after its largest partner, Hewlett Packard, became a competitor and due to concerns of how quickly it was spending money.[4] The company experienced losses of $34 million the following year and the board called for the resignation of the CEO.[5] Additionally, five shareholder lawsuits were filed against the company, alleging it did not disclose the financial impact expected from a federal shutdown.[4] In December 2013 the company terminated CEO Basile,[6] replacing him with Kevin DeNuccio in February 2014.[7]

The New York Stock Exchange de-listed Violin Memory shares in October 2016 because its market capitalization had fallen below $15 million.[8] A few days later it changed to be traded on the OTC Markets Group exchange OTCQX, using the same VMEM symbol.[9] In November 2016, it was valued at $3.7 million.[7] On December 14, 2016 Violin Memory filed for Chapter 11 Federal Bankruptcy protection.[10]

On April 24 2017, Violin announced in a press release that they had emerged from bankruptcy, and had been purchased by Quantum Partners LP, a private investment fund managed by Soros Fund Management LLC.[11]

Technology

Violin Memory does not use solid state drives (SSD), but instead uses a proprietary design referred to as flash fabric architecture (FFA).[12] The FFA technology consists of: a mesh of NAND flash dies, modules[13] that organize the mesh of flash dies, and a proprietary switched architecture for fault tolerance.[14] In September 2011 Violin announced the 6000 series all-silicon shared flash memory storage arrays.[15]

vMOS[16][17] is Violin Memory’s software layer that integrates with the FFA to provide data protection, management and connectivity to the host.

Products

The Violin 7000 series includes application aware snapshots, continuous data protection, synchronous replication, asynchronous replication and metro cluster functionality.[18][19][20]

On December 1, 2015 the Violin Memory FSP 7250 and 7600 were announced. The Violin FSP 7250 was marketed as an entry level point product.[21]

The 7700[22] series can scale up to ten 6000 or 7000 series arrays for up to 700TB of raw capacity or 3.5 PB with deduplication[23]

The Violin 6000 series[24] all flash arrays include the 6600, 6200 and 6100. The 6600[25] is based on SLC flash and offers 17.5TB of capacity. The 6200[26] offers flash performance at capacities from 17.5 to 70TB. The 6100[27] is a smaller array at lower price of entry with a pay as you grow[28] option.

The Windows Flash Array (WFA) announced in 2014,[29] uses Microsoft’s Storage Server 2012 R2 instead of vMOS. Jointly developed with Microsoft, the WFA supports Microsoft’s SMB Direct protocol, marketed as network-attached storage.[30]

References

  1. ↑ "Violin Memory: Company". Violin Memory. Retrieved 2011-07-28.
  2. ↑ "Violin Memory raises $50M, brings valuation to $800M". Silicon Valley Business Journal. March 30, 2012. Retrieved August 14, 2013.
  3. ↑ "Notice of Exempt Offering of Securities". Edgar. US Securities and Exchange Commission. March 29, 2012. Retrieved August 14, 2013.
  4. 1 2 3 4 Bort, Julie (December 11, 2013). "Newly Public Company Violin Memory Is In Turmoil And The Lawsuits Are Flying". Retrieved February 10, 2015.
  5. ↑ "Can a new CEO pull Violin Memory out of its current slump?". The Register. January 7, 2014. Retrieved February 10, 2015.
  6. ↑ "Struggling Flash Storage Firm Violin Memory Fires Its CEO". VentureBeat. December 16, 2013. Retrieved February 3, 2014.
  7. 1 2 Mellor, Chris (November 10, 2016). "Violin Memory resembles toast". The Register. Retrieved November 22, 2016.
  8. ↑ James Garrett Baldwin (October 28, 2016). "NYSE Moves to Delist Violin Memory (VMEM)". Investopedia. Retrieved October 31, 2016.
  9. ↑ Chris Mellor (October 31, 2016). "Violin switches stock exchanges fast: OTCQX replaces delisting NYSE as its share trading body". The Register. Retrieved November 8, 2016.
  10. ↑ "Violin Memory's sad song leads to bankruptcy - Storage Soup". searchstorage.techtarget.com. Retrieved 2018-02-15.
  11. ↑ Chris Mellor (April 25, 2017). "Violin Memory steps out of bankruptcy, takes the storage stage again". The Register. Retrieved April 27, 2017.
  12. ↑ Michael Cusanelli (June 27, 2014). "Violin Memory Delivers 'Business in a Flash' with Concerto 7000". The VAR Guy blog. Retrieved November 8, 2016.
  13. ↑ Antony Adshead (October 12, 2012). "Violin - a proudly proprietary storage vendor . ." ComputerWeekly.com.
  14. ↑ Chin-Fah, Heoh (March 8, 2012). "we raid vRAID". Storage GaGa Blog.
  15. ↑ Robin Harris (April 11, 2012). "Violin's clean-sheet architecture". Storage Mojo blog. Retrieved September 17, 2013.
  16. ↑ Brian Beeler (August 13, 2012). "Violin Pairs with Symantec to Deliver Data Management Tools". StorageReview.com.
  17. ↑ Chris Mellor (August 14, 2012). "Symantec, Violin in no-strings fling for flash array software". The Register.
  18. ↑ "VIOLIN CONCERTO 7000 ALL FLASH ARRAY; PERFORMANCE PACKED WITH DATA SERVICES" (PDF). Product Profile. Taneja Group. June 2014.
  19. ↑ Nick Heath (June 24, 2014). "Violin Memory gives its flash storage an enterprise-friendly makeover". ZDNet.
  20. ↑ Steve Wexler (June 25, 2014). "Violin: In the data center, no one can hear you scream!". IT Trends & Analysis.
  21. ↑ Sheryl Anderson (December 1, 2015). "Expanded Flash Storage Platform From Violin Provides Needed Solutions for Customers Seeking Optimization for Extreme Performance; Primary Storage Solutions; and Entry Level Capacity". Press release.
  22. ↑ Peter Williams (June 26, 2014). "Violin: Violin Memory back in all-flash storage tune with new data management strings". Bloor.
  23. ↑ Pedro Hernandez (June 24, 2014). "Violin Plays a Flashy Concerto with New 7000 Array". InfoStor.
  24. ↑ "Three New All Flash Arrays 6100 (17.5TB, 26TB and 35TB) Revealed by Violin Memory". StorageNewsletter.com (Press Release). StorageNewsletter.com. August 12, 2014.
  25. ↑ Timothy Prickett Morgan (October 18, 2013). "Violin Turns Flash Arrays Into Blazing Clusters". EnterpriseTech.
  26. ↑ Carol Sliwa (May 2014). "Violin 6000 arrays feature proprietary flash modules, memory fabric". SearchSolidStateStorage.com.
  27. ↑ Chris Mellor (August 4, 2014). "Violin strings up cheaper instrument: 17.5TB flash box for $100k + change". The Register.
  28. ↑ Carol Sliwa (July 15, 2014). "Violin storage adds WFA models, pay-as-you-grow option". SearchSolidStateStorage.com.
  29. ↑ "Violin Memory - Interview". truebit.tv podcast. W. Curtis Preston. April 28, 2014.
  30. ↑ "Building High Performance Storage for Hyper-V Cluster on Scale-Out File Servers using Violin Windows Flash Arrays". White Paper. Microsoft. October 2014.
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