StorTrends is promising all-flash performance and enterprise-grade data services at half the price of competing storage vendors.
The data storage division of computer hardware maker American Megatrends (AMI) this week took the wraps off its 3600i series of all-flash storage arrays, new hardware for storage area networks (SANs) that undercuts rivals in term of cost, the company claims. StorTrends 3600i arrays, which can scale to 64 terabytes (TB) of capacity, have a starting price of $24,999.
“Until today, the vast majority of customers have been shy of all-flash storage primarily due to the cost,” said AMI’s Justin Bagby, director of StorTrends, in a statement. “AMI has broken down this barrier by offering all-flash storage for less than $0.50 per GB.”
StorTrends isn’t the only vendor that’s using low prices to tempt businesses into giving their SANs a flash-enabled performance boost.
In January, Dell took the wraps off an entry-level SC4020 all-flash array with 2.8 TB of capacity. “As Dell continues to bring down the cost of enterprise class storage, we now offer customers the industry’s easiest to use and lowest cost entry point into mid-range, all-flash enterprise arrays,” said Alan Atkinson, general manager of Dell Storage, in a launch announcement.
Low-cost hardware aside, StorTrends accomplished this feat by leveraging certain data optimization and management capabilities. The company was able to hit that milestone “due to the highly efficient [inline] data deduplication, compression and [Enlift] caching technology,” continued Bagby.
Enlift is a proprietary caching algorithm that extends the useful life of an array by ensuring that incoming writes are handled by write-intensive solid-state drives (SSD). 3600i series “Write Tiers” are available in 200 GB, 400 GB, 800 GB and 2 TB capacities. “Read Tier” capacities range from 128 GB to 1 TB. In addition, the 3610i features snapshot support, automated data tiering, WAN optimization and SSD-based encryption.
Moreover, organizations no longer have to put up with pokey application performance, asserts to Arun Taneja, founder of The Taneja Group analyst firm.
“From high-transaction databases to virtual desktop implementations, the patience users have for traditional spinning disk speeds are wearing thin,” Taneja remarked in a statement. The combination of low prices, “high performance and enterprise-class data services” delivered by StorTrends’ means “IT organizations no longer need to compromise,” he added.
StorTrends is also making available a software tool that allows the company to tailor the 3600i to the unique requirements of each customer.
The StorTrends iDATA Analysis Tool evaluates IT environments to determine their storage needs, including capacity utilization, IOPS and network bandwidth, among several other metrics. “The StorTrends iDATA tool will provide you with an estimated dedupe ratio while also telling you how much active data versus cold data you have within your environment,” said Bagby.
StorTrends’ 3600i all-flash arrays are available now.