Coraid in ZFS

CORAID Inc. announced the availability of EtherDrive Z-Series NAS appliances.

EtherDrive Z-Series combines the ZFS open source file system with CORAID’s Ethernet SAN technology to deliver price-performance and enterprise storage management capabilities. Advanced features include 10 Gb Ethernet, in-line deduplication, replication, unlimited snapshots, compression, automatic tiering, continuous data protection, file search, and thin provisioning, with bundles starting at under $1,000 per terabyte.

CORAID is redefining the economics of storage with solutions that provide enterprises of all sizes with a flexible tier of high performance, scale-out storage. CORAID’s EtherDrive storage platform has been adopted by a wide variety of enterprise, government, and education organizations since its 2005 launch into the Linux market. The addition of EtherDrive Z-Series provides an enterprise-class NAS solution that consolidates growing volumes of file-based and block-based data onto a single unified Ethernet SAN. Enterprise Strategy Group estimates that file-based data will account for 70 percent of total archived capacity by 2012.

"The feature set and price point of CORAID’s EtherDrive Z-Series make it a highly disruptive platform," said Terri McClure, senior analyst at Enterprise Strategy Group. "Just like fast x86 servers and Linux transformed the server market, CORAID has combined 10 Gb Ethernet SAN technology with the well-respected ZFS open-source file system to run a similar play in the enterprise storage market. Delivering this level of value with a product that starts at $1000 per terabyte gives CORAID a tremendous story around new storage economics."

EtherDrive Z-Series
EtherDrive Z-Series appliances come in two configurations, with a variety of connectivity options:

• EtherDrive Z2000: ZFS file system, 4 cores, 32 GB RAM, and either 8 x 1 Gb Ethernet or 4 x 10 Gb Ethernet connectivity.
• EtherDrive Z3000: ZFS file system, 8 cores, 48 GB RAM, L2 SSD cache, and either 8 x 1 Gb Ethernet or 4 x 10 Gb Ethernet connectivity.

Key features/benefits:

• 10 Gb Ethernet: Support for 1 and 10 Gb Ethernet SAN and NAS connectivity, delivering high performance for virtual desktops, scientific applications, video, and other demanding workloads
• EtherDrive Integration: Enables administrators to quickly add storage to meet demand with no architectural hardware boundaries or subsequent downtime
• In-line deduplication: Ideal for virtualized servers/desktops and other environments with redundant data
• Replication: Sophisticated replication ensures business continuity, with in-flight deduplication available to reduce WAN traffic
• Unlimited snapshots: ZFS supports unlimited snapshots, both scheduled and on-demand
• Compression: File compression helps maximize storage investments
• Automatic tiering: ZFS automatically takes advantage of SSD drives in the NAS appliance or EtherDrive storage array to optimize performance
• Continuous data protection: Enables granular point-in-time data recovery
• Integrated file search: Indexing can be scheduled to run at off-peak hours; searches files and snapshots
• Thin provisioning: Maximize efficiency of storage by increasing utilization, including flexible expansion of storage allocations without reboots

EtherDrive Z-Series appliances enable unified management of file-based data, along with the underlying Ethernet SAN resources, from a single management interface. Z-Series NAS appliances attach to CORAID EtherDrive SAN arrays, supporting SATA, SAS, and SSD drives, and enabling seamless scaling of storage resources with minimal configuration and management.

"The new EtherDrive Z-Series is a major product line extension for CORAID, and we already have one of our top Fortune 100 customers in deployment," said Carl Wright, executive vice president of sales and product management at CORAID. "CORAID is redefining storage economics with a 5-8x price performance advantage over legacy storage, and EtherDrive Z-Series provides our customers with best-in-class capabilities like in-line deduplication, replication, unlimited snapshots, and automatic tiering."

Availability
EtherDrive Z-Series appliances are available in June 2010 from CORAID and authorized partners, with bundles starting at less than $1,000 per terabyte.