WhipTail With De-Dupe to Tier 0 Storage For SSDs

For years, data deduplication has been relegated to a backup role, but no longer. At SNW Fall 2009, WhipTail Technologies, Inc., a provider of solid-state drive (SSD) Tier 0 storage appliances, announced that the company will integrate Exar’s Hifn BitWackr deduplication and compression solution into all Racerunner SSD appliances.

With the addition of the deduplication code, the line of SSD appliances formerly called WhipTail has been branded Racerunner, and is the first SSD appliance family to offer in-line primary storage deduplication functionality, while dramatically lowering cost per GB.

“As a company offering a fairly new technology ourselves, we really appreciate and value the potential that coupling another new technology [BitWackr] with Racerunner presents. With this partnership, we are the first to offer enterprises an in-line approach to data deduplication – never storing duplicated data, unlike competitors who must scan a volume for duplicated data as a background job,” said James Candelaria, CTO of WhipTail Technologies. “Once again, we’re proving Tier 0 storage doesn’t have to be expensive. By providing in-line de-duplication, customers can save money by investing only in the storage they need.”

Racerunner is available in 1.5, 3.0 and 6.0 TB (Racerunner 1500, Racerunner 3000 and Racerunner 6000 respectively) as well as varying levels of redundancies. It is best suited for enterprises with poorly performing databases, over-taxed virtualization storage pools and underperforming email systems. As a result of incorporating BitWackr into Racerunner SSD appliances, enterprises will often experience consolidation ratios greater than 10:1. They will also have the option of deduplication on a logical unit number (LUN) to LUN basis; allowing customers to deduplicate and compress bulk data while still providing the highest functionality for their most performance-sensitive data. Racerunner has demonstrated deduplication performance in excess of 1 gb/s.

“SSD and deduplication both require a specific expertise and deep knowledge of storage in order to successfully integrate them within an organization,” said John Matze, Vice President, Storage System Products at Exar. “In integrating our BitWackr solution into its SSD appliances, WhipTail is making SSD and deduplication easy and affordable for customers that do not have the expertise or time to roll out their own solution.”

Patent-pending BitWackr is the first hardware/software combination that provides in-line, ‘set it and forget it’ data deduplication and compression. BitWackr reduces disk capacity requirements and purchases, and reduces the number of storage arrays that have to be managed while reducing heat dissipation, power and cooling requirements.

“The proper handling of SSDs requires significant pre-processing of every write, so the addition of deduplication is not only logical, but also has the benefit of reducing the amount of data written to the media, extending the useful life of the drive,” said James Bagley, senior analyst for Storage Strategies NOW. “WhipTail Technologies and Exar [with the acquisition of Hifn] have proven their expertise and innovation in SSD and deduplication – two very hot technologies that are also quite complementary. And both have established themselves as technology leaders – offering the first 6TB SSD Tier 0 appliance and the first hardware/software deduplication solution respectively. By marrying these two technologies, WhipTail Technologies and Exar have come together naturally and given companies an SSD deduplication option unlike any other – ideal for applications such as virtualization, database, NAS and lab environments.”

Racerunner appliances will begin shipping with the deduplication feature in Q4 2009.