Kaminario K2 All-Flash Storage

Kaminario, Inc. announced its fourth-generation K2 All-Flash storage array.

The K2 v4 delivers performance consistency and resiliency to midrange enterprises in a smaller, denser, greener and lower-priced configuration.

Built to meet the growing demand for SSD flash storage, the K2 v4 is based on the SPEAR Scale-out Architecture, a flash storage architecture that can deliver consistent and predictable performance for general purpose, mixed workload environments with enterprise resiliency and data protection.

Today’s legacy storage architectures are 20 years old. Outdated spinning disk architectures can’t handle today’s 100% storage growth per year without driving up costs significantly. Enterprises are especially challenged as business-critical application workloads are expected to grow 70% over the next four years. Current scale-up and stack-up SSD architectures compromise latency, bandwidth and consistency in performance for capacity. The K2 v4 can linearly grow capacity without degrading the performance of bandwidth, latency or IOPS and, at the same time, provide the resiliency required by enterprises.

K2 v4 specific enhancements include:

• Performance: 400% more read/write bandwidth than previous versions with low latency (120μs writes) and leading IOPS for any mixed workloads.
• Lower TCO: K2 provides a 500% density increase over previous versions and is now offered at half the price.
• Safety and reliability: Non-disruptive upgrades, guaranteed performance under any failure with minimal impact (usually under 10%), hot swappable SAS drives and patent-pending high performance, space-efficient snapshot technology provide enterprise-class SLAs.
• Ease: Expanded support for general purpose, server and desktop virtualization (VDI) environments such as VMware VAAI, OpenStack cloud computing and RESTful APIs. Customer’s choice of iSCSI and FC connections.

Kenshoo, Ltd., provider of digital marketing solutions for search marketing, social media and online advertising, reported consistently outstanding results with the K2 that no other SSD storage solution could give them.

"Kaminario has taken the performance of our premium digital marketing services to the next level," said Israel David, SVP technology, Kenshoo.

Noting the K2’s scale-out architectural approach, George Herman, president of Distributed Systems Solutions Inc., praised Kaminario for being able to make and guarantee the kind of storage his company needs for on-demand analytics applications that require consistent throughput with large-scale data computations.

"6GB/s consistent throughput is incredible," Herman said. "And Kaminario is doing it with higher storage density, in a smaller footprint, at a lower price. No one else is doing that. And I’ve never seen such a robust performance service level agreement from any legacy storage. The K2 is a real architectural revolution."

"The enterprise market organizations seeking to invest in all-flash solid-state storage arrays are demanding performance, scalability and reliability," said Dan Iacono, research director, storage systems, IDC. "Kaminario, with its next generation of K2, promises to deliver a scalable high-performance platform that is affordable for midrange to high-end environments."

"Kaminario has leveraged its predominance in SSD scale-out architectures to deliver a greater performance and higher density platform that still meets customers’ needs for a smaller, more cost-effective and energy-efficient footprint," said James Bagley, senior analyst, Storage Strategies NOW. "Kaminario also offers a number of ease-of-use capabilities with automated data loading and balancing, self-healing high availability and nondisruptive updates. It just plugs in and runs."

"Kaminario has done a good job of taking the high cost out of SSD storage with their new K2 all-flash array," said George Crump, president and founder, Storage Switzerland. "They are also the only vendor we know of who can maintain high performance in a degraded mode, such as during an SSD failure. Kaminario is well-positioned to deliver enterprise-class high availability and resiliency in a scalable, cost-effective midrange to high-end product."

"Today’s virtualized and distributed workloads can strain the storage system," said Dan Kusnetzky, founder of Kusnetzky Group LLC, industry analyst and author. "Flash-based storage, such as Kaminario’s K2, has been meeting the challenge of resiliency, I/O performance, latency and throughput these workloads impose. Kaminario’s K2 family of storage systems has been addressing customer requirements for quite some time and has pushed the boundaries of scalability and performance with each new generation of products. The Kaminario K2 v4 offers another step forward and increases Kaminario’s capability to support high levels of scalability and performance in mixed workloads while keeping the budget in mind."

"We are thrilled to announce the new K2, the industry’s only all-Flash storage that already provides customers with high-speed performance without compromising latency or bandwidth," said Dani Golan, CEO, Kaminario. "The unparalleled performance, density and plug-and-play ease of use our customers have experienced with the K2 has significantly lowered their overall TCO."

Taneja Group’s technology validation on K2 (registration needed)