DataDirect Launches Storage Fusion Architecture

DataDirect Networks, Inc. announced its Storage Fusion Architecture (SFA) storage platform, which delivers ease of use, file system and application simplification, unparalleled performance, scalability, and power savings to today’s demanding IT environments.

SFA10000

"With the staggering growth of unstructured data in the enterprise, and the increasing complexity of managing network infrastructure requirements, our customers have been clamoring for a unified, easy to manage, file and block computing and storage backbone," said Alex Bouzari, CEO and Co-founder, DataDirect Networks. "For the past three years we have been developing and testing such functionality —  easy to deploy, capable of simultaneously simplifying the deployment of file systems and applications, scaling to extreme performance levels, and delivering significant power savings and rock solid reliability. That is the Storage Fusion Architecture, a platform designed for today and tomorrow’s environments that eliminates the compromises users previously made with antiquated storage and server platforms."
 
The evolution of processor technology has ushered in multi-core computers which are now commonly used to increase compute capacity and application performance. In massively threaded cluster and grid environments, even large file throughput operations result in random transactional I/O to scalable storage systems, requiring transactional throughput rather than simply maximum streaming capability.

Additionally, storage systems and servers must now be able to respond to heavily threaded I/O patterns, by delivering transaction-optimized extreme storage bandwidth as well as high throughput. SFA brings the fusion of unsurpassed levels of bandwidth and IOPS, with file and application hosting services, all in one easy to deploy appliance, providing the ideal cloud computing backbone for today?s demanding unstructured and transaction-based environments.
 
"The era of CPU core speed performance improvements is effectively winding down in favor of multi-core performance scaling," said Steve Conway, Research Vice President, High Performance Computing group, IDC. "With four core processors being commonly deployed today and six and eight core processors right around the corner, storage requirements are changing and I/O is increasingly becoming randomized. DDN has designed the Storage Fusion Architecture to quickly respond to advancements in processing and memory technology as HPC enters the era of petascale environments."

The SFA10000 delivers an unrivaled 10 GB/sec of read and write performance and over one million IOPS, with the ability to manage up to 2.4 petabytes of storage in just two data center floor tiles. Other features include file and application hosting, an active/active redundant design, mirrored cache, support for multiple RAID levels and SSD, SAS and SATA disk drives, intelligent block striping, SATAssure data protection, power saving modes, and 8Gb Fibre Channel and 40 Gb InfiniBand host-port options.
 
"We gravitate to convenient, but constrained, descriptors in this industry: users are either enterprise or mid-sized, perhaps commercial or rich media focused, and have structured block storage or unstructured file storage," said Mark Peters, analyst, Enterprise Strategy Group. "The real world is far more convoluted. Thus, unstructured data is flooding the traditional commercial space as organizations collaborate and communicate with rich media applications – explaining why a growing number of enterprise users are implementing DataDirect Networks, whose scalable, high-performing, dense systems are ideally suited for such applications. In the mashed-up real world, the programmable Storage Fusion Architecture from DDN is not just about extending performance and density for its traditional users, but is laying an intriguing foundation for a rapid addition of features which should extend its attractiveness to even more enterprise users."   

The SFA10000 is currently in customer trials and will be generally available in September of this year.