Sun announced the, or removed from stealth mode, the F5100, their flash-based storage array that uses SO-DIMM form-factor flash modules (see last month’s post for the StorageMojo take on the unannounced product). With 20 flash modules and 480 GB of capacity it starts at $50k, which means for big customers it will be less than $40k.

The box supports 64 SAS connections, zones, up to 1.9 TB of capacity and up to 9.7 GB/s sequential write bandwidth. Here’s the official Sun web page. Joerg Moellenkamp has a good short writeup as well. (Thanks, David!)

Here’s a picture:
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The StorageMojo take
A shareable flash resource at $100/GB list should be popular. It should also get more data center guys thinking about power per IOP instead of just performance.

Another shot across the bow of the big iron storage flotilla and a nifty advance. Good luck to them.

Courteous comments welcome, of course. Would a project name like “The Beast” have upped the sex appeal?