New Pillar Product and Technology Advancements

Pillar Data Systems presented new product and technology advancements to attendees of its first annual Pillar Customer and Partner Summit. Pillar hosted its community members at The Phoenician Resort in Scottsdale for a series of product, technology and service demonstrations. The Pillar Summit provides an opportunity for customers and partners to share experiences and best practices and to get a window into plans for future Pillar Data Systems innovations.

"We’re exceptionally proud to have such a bright and loyal community that has come together for this first-time Summit," said Mike Workman, Chief Executive Officer and Chairman, Pillar Data Systems. "I’m personally thrilled to share Pillar’s vision for the future of storage and to have introduced the next generation of our award-winning technologies."

Pillar is introducing
the following technology advancements:

Unified Native AxiomONE Replication: Array-based data protection for both SAN and NAS for the Pillar Axiom product platform. Pillar’s AxiomONE Replication extends its current replication offerings with easy to use policy-based Application-Aware profiles to give more choice for data protection for customers of all sizes.
Availability of High-capacity SSD Bricks: Pillar continues the expansion of SSD storage options in the Axiom capacity pool. Pillar now offers a 2.4 TB SSD Brick, delivering one of the broadest ranges of drive options in the industry for more sophisticated data tiering.
AxiomONE Pre-emptive Copy: New adaptive learning RAS feature that senses ‘suspect’ drives in the storage pool and copies data to a spare drive before calling for a replacement. The Pre-emptive Copy feature enhances Pillar’s industry-leading drive rebuild times by doing the bulk of the work before a failure occurs, using a simple copy instead ofa rebuild of the drive contents.
QoS within Storage Class: Each storage media type (FC, SSD, SATA) can now have all QoS priority bands operational within a respective class – delivering further flexibility of Pillar’s patented QoS. QoS adjusts priority, CPU, cache and network resources – all of which are extremely effective even with SSD in a storage pool. While statistical short stroking is one of the tools used to optimize SATA performance, it is only one tool used by the Axiom to extract every drop of performance from the capacity pool.
Application-Aware QoS Migrations: By providing customers with options to migrate data between QoS levels based on administrator policies or built-in intelligent storage pool re-allocation, this feature significantly decreases storage management time and its inherent costs.
Axiom Slammers with 8Gbps FC SAN and 10Gbps Ethernet NAS Connectivity: Slammers with this high-speed, front-end connectivity will allow customers to take advantage of new network technologies and improve the overall throughput of the infrastructure. Existing Axiom customers will be allowed to introduce Slammers to their platform seamlessly, without a forklift upgrade or additional software licenses.
Axiom High-performance Storage Machine: A new Axiom configuration using 200GB SSD and 8Gbps FC SAN connectivity, capable of half a million IOPs for all application block IO – a true application accelerator, not just an SQL accelerator.

Mike Workman delivered a keynote address, where he outlined his vision for the future of Pillar Data Systems and detailed the company’s continued plans to drive innovation in the storage industry. Rick Villars, Vice President, Storage Systems & Executive Strategies at IDC, presented on storage industry trends and purchasing considerations. Pillar also held several technology demonstrations and provided product roadmap guidance during the event.

"Never before in the history of Pillar have we brought together such an esteemed collection of customers, partners and industry experts," said Nancy Holleran, President and Chief Operating Officer, Pillar Data Systems. "We’re especially pleased that we were able to roll out so many exciting and new technologies that will further establish Pillar’s strong track record of innovating to achieve greater storage efficiency and commitment to world class customer service."

"Pillar’s belief in the value of the customer/company relationship sets it apart from major manufacturers who are resting on their brand power and captured mindshare," said Eugene Alfaro, Manager, Global IT Operations and Support, Simpson Manufacturing Co. "Companies with the key combination of innovation and a customer-centric focus have proven themselves in the past to be the ‘David’ versus the ‘Goliath.’ This summit validates Pillar’s continued dedication to this synergy."

"It’s certainly refreshing to partner with a vendor who knows your business on a personal level. It’s obvious that Pillar is truly invested because their leadership and development teams don’t stop making improvements just because the company has one of the most efficient storage systems on the market. We’ve done the research ourselves, and Pillar is light years ahead of other storage companies when it comes to delivering guaranteed Quality of Service and efficiency. And more importantly, Pillar takes every relationship very seriously, which it has shown once again by investing in today’s event to help its customers succeed," said Julien Mousqueton, Technical Architect, Groupe Agrica.

"As an early adopter of Pillar, I have benefited from the advanced technologies and innovative designs of the Pillar Axiom," said Michael Geldart, Senior Manager of Computer Operations, Cubist Pharmaceuticals. "Pillar is truly a company that ‘walks the talk.’ This event is a great example of the continued dedication Pillar has to its customers and to bringing innovation to the storage industry."