INFINIDAT expands InfiniBox enterprise storage family

INFINIDAT has expanded its nfiniBox™ family of storage arrays with the addition of two new capabilities and a new midrange model.

NAS file support (NFSv3) as a free software upgrade
NAS (network-attached storage) functionality can be enabled on all new and existing InfiniBox systems (via a non-disruptive software upgrade) to provide truly enterprise-class unified storage. INFINIDAT’s NAS capability is designed for hyper-scale workloads supporting high performance access to hundreds of millions of files and multi-petabytes of capacity on a single file system. This is a true, native software-based NAS implementation (completely in-house developed), not a NAS front-end bolted onto a block device.

In addition, the NAS capability supports all the same advanced InfiniBox features provided by INFINIDAT’s current block storage: a single automated management console; zero latency; non-blocking high performance snapshots; thin, smart clones; self-healing high-availability; hybrid disk/SSD infrastructure and non-disruptive upgrades.

InfiniBox F2000, a new midrange storage array
Designed to fulfill the needs of businesses that have data volumes in the sub-petabyte range, the InfiniBox F2000 starts at 250TB usable capacity in an 18U configuration. It joins the highly successful InfiniBox F6000, which contains up to 2PB of usable storage in a single 42U rack form factor. Both the F2000 and F6000 deliver 99.99999% availability (less than 3 seconds of downtime per year), low power consumption (between 3-8 KW at peak), full management and provisioning automation, and ultra-high performance.
Near-Sync Replication
The new INFINIDAT asynchronous replication is so efficient that users can set an RPO of less than 4 seconds. This is a unique capability when compared to competitive systems that typically deliver RPOs of minutes. Snapshots and Async Replication are included with every InfiniBox system.

“As a cloud service provider, we wanted to be able to offer our customers a high performing shared SAN solution on which they could become quickly provisioned,” said Andrew Hodes, CTO at INetU. “We found that the InfiniBox outperformed every other spinning disk and hybrid solution we tested. What was more impressive is that the InfiniBox performance was near that of an all-flash array in many benchmarks and at a fraction of the cost per GB. We conducted numerous failure tests, ranging from taking out a node to pulling multiple disks, and the InfiniBox didn’t blink an eye.”

“INFINIDAT’s innovative new capabilities provide companies with greater storage flexibility and convenience for a wide-variety of mission-critical and business-critical workloads,” said Jack Rondoni, vice president, Storage Networking, at Brocade. “Our mutual customers now have the ability to leverage these capabilities along with a wide variety of Brocade SAN and IP storage switches to maintain the highest levels of availability and throughput.”

InfiniBox models are scalable up to 2PB of usable storage capacity in a single 19-inch/42U rack, offer 99.99999% availability, deliver ultra-high performance of over 750K IOPS, and enable exceptionally high throughput of up to 12.5 GB/s. INFINIDAT systems are also extremely power-efficient, drawing a maximum of between 3-8KW at full load.

All InfiniBox storage arrays are based upon the unique INFINIDAT Storage Architecture (ISA). ISA provides software-driven storage functionality that is fully abstracted from standard X86 based hardware. This software abstraction allows INFINIDAT to continuously exploit the latest hardware innovations as they become available for exceptional price/performance.

With over 100 software patents, ISA delivers:

Simplicity – To reduce complexity, INFINIDAT has created a set of powerful software tools that provide state-of-the-art rapid provisioning, automated host configuration management, workflow best practice settings/compliance, and overall storage operations.
Availability – End-to-end data protection, triple redundant power and data paths, snapshots and replication, hot swap upgrades and many other reliability features built in to the core OS layer.
Capacity – InfiniBox systems start at 250TB and scale to up to 2PB of usable storage in a single rack.

There are no incremental software licensing fees with InfiniBox. All software capabilities, including the new NAS and Near-Sync Replication features, are included in the base price. In addition, all InfiniBox storage arrays come standard with three years of 24x7x365 maintenance.

“Many vendors in the industry have been slowly flash-optimizing their legacy arrays over time to make better and more efficient use of flash media, but INFINIDAT started with a clean sheet of paper to create a general purpose, hybrid storage array that very efficiently blends the use of flash and spinning disk media in an ultra-reliable, extremely high performance package targeted for dense, mixed enterprise workload consolidation,” said Eric Burgener, research director, Storage at IDC. “Features in this latest release, including NFS file support and a near synchronous replication implementation, help to make this platform a great consolidation play that can simultaneously and cost-effectively support both primary and secondary storage environments based around either block or file protocols.”