For the server-heavy people

[TallTroll]

An old smoking buddy of mine is now IT support here

http://www.fusionio.com

Short version : Flash memory in the 160GB+ bracket that replaces RAID. For applications where you have heavy I/O requirements (heavy duty d/base lookups etc), can improve access times, reduce latency, reduce I/O bottlenecks etc. They have Wozniak on board as Chief Scientist, apparently

[BoL]

The chap running mysqlperformanceblog has run a number of benchmarks comparing fusionio with SSD and RAID...there are more related posts on there, all showing how fusionio generally blows other storage devices away on a range of tests.

http://www.mysqlperformanceblog.com/2009/12/08/fusionio-time-for-benchmarks/

http://www.mysqlperformanceblog.com/2009/05/01/raid-vs-ssd-vs-fusionio/

[Torben]

Just make sure you plan for loss of data.

When the new memory based storage types fail they fail hard. There is no such thing as data recovery so make sure you have a good backup 

[jatar_k]

you had to go and spoil the punchline Torben


pretty cool stuff though

[Torben]

Actually it would make a kick ass DB server in a master/slave configuration

[TallTroll]

Yeah, it looks like its still a bit pricey / overkill for general use, but if you've got half a rack somewhere doing constant lookups to render pages and the like, it might be very handy. I'm seeing if I can get some pricing from them