What makes you think it is non-local? Two of the options are RAM only (32GB and 512GB). That's like memory chips plugged into the motherboard (what modern normal user computers often only have 2 to 4GB of). You would run a RAM disk if your software needed something more than the boot drive to run using that. That's why the numbers are so large.
The other option is PCIe Flash, that's a solid state "disk" plugged into the motherboard expansion slot, basically. Again since that flat out state PCIe, they are saying it is local.
Are you saying it's appropriate to run a database on a RAM disk? This product is offered without a disk, so it has to be coupled with a SAN or similar remote storage system.
Our IO flavor has 2x 1.6TB PCIe flash cards, this is how we see most users running databases or otherwise persisting "hot" data. I've gotten to play with these over the last few months, and its really incredible how fast they are - they totally crush even high end SSDs. People have traditionally used these in a tiered setup to accelerate spinning disks, but the costs have come down to where it hardly makes sense to use anything else for low latency persistent storage.
We're working to hook this up to our existing block storage offering as well, which will offer more flexibility to attach SSD or spinning disk backed block devices to any flavor.
Reliability is similar to an SSD. The underlying storage tech is basically the same: some flash chips, with a controller that handles wear leveling and so on. Just that instead of running operations through a SATA controller it uses the PCIe bus, which offers higher bandwidth and lower latency.
Interestingly, Apple is shipping PCIe flash in all (I think) of their latest laptops.
The other option is PCIe Flash, that's a solid state "disk" plugged into the motherboard expansion slot, basically. Again since that flat out state PCIe, they are saying it is local.