The Clipper Group Asserts Starboard Storage Simplifies Storage

Starboard Storage Systems, Inc., in Application-Crafted Storage for mixed workloads, announced the results of a report from The Clipper Group, Inc. which states that its ystem simplifies the deployment of a unified storage system and lowers the TCO for the storage infrastructure for SMEs.

Additionally, its report states that with the Starboard AC72 Storage System, SME data centers also should be able to improve the utilization and management of their storage resources and achieve improvements in performance, all while lowering the footprint and power requirements, reducing the TCO of their IT infrastructure.

"We’re very impressed with the product that Starboard Storage is bringing to SME IT customers," said David Reine, senior contributing analyst at The Clipper Group. "SME’s need storage solutions that are less complex and easy to deploy in order to reduce the total cost of ownership of the IT infrastructure. Starboard Storage’s solution breaks down the silos of traditional storage with a solution that promises to unify multiple storage architectures and deliver twice the performance at less than one half of the cost of legacy NAS/SAN solutions."

Most SME IT environments need to support multiple applications simultaneously. Using multiple entry-level systems to isolate workloads results in stranded storage capacity, fewer features and costly scalability.

Legacy unified storage systems have twenty-year old outdated architectures relying on protocol layering that hinder performance for mixed workloads. An enterprise storage system capable of consolidating multiple workloads for SME can reduce management overhead, while increasing utilization.

"Our customer’s want to simplify their operating environment affordably without sacrificing performance," said Lee Johns, VP of product management at Starboard Storage Systems. "The Clipper Group’s assessment of the AC72 reaffirms the potential for real business impact from the MAST architecture. SME do not have to sacrifice performance and management over price for their mixed workloads with the AC72."

Starboard AC72 Storage System
The AC72 provides consolidation onto a single storage system, optimizing the configuration for each application by creating a Dynamic Storage Pool with virtual volumes tuned for each workload.

It also introduces the SSD Accelerator Tier, a second-generation tiering architecture that lowers operational overhead and provides predictable performance when and where it’s needed. It boosts performance for both reads and writes, providing tuned storage that maintains performance for mixed workloads.

Combining dynamic storage pooling and automated SSD acceleration for each application workload offers SME simplicity in managing mixed workload environments.

In addition, Starboard Storage Apps simplify provisioning of volumes across multiple storage protocols including CIFS, NFS, iSCSI and FC. Since the AC72 was specially designed to manage mixed workloads, IT administrators can reduce their time and costs in managing storage.

It offers an all-inclusive software license that includes thin provisioning, mirroring, asynchronous replication and snapshots. The AC72 scales up to 474TBs with a redundant architecture.

Distribution and Availability
Starboard Storage distributes its products through a network of VARs that share the goal of bringing Application-Crafted Storage solutions to market and into SME.

The Starboard Storage AC72 System is available. It is priced at $59,995 MSRP for a storage system including 24TB storage, an SSD Accelerator Tier with three SSD drives, thin provisioning, asynchronous replication and snapshots. Customers can expand the system by adding AC72 Expansion Shelves. Both 15,000 RPM and 7,200 RPM SAS drives are supported.

The AC72, with its MAST Architecture, is designed to simplify managing mixed workload environments that include unstructured, virtualized, and structured data.

To read The Clipper Group report on the AC72 (registration needed)