sTec Entering Into SSD Appliance

sTec, Inc. announced its s3000 storage appliance.

The s3000 combines the performance, reliability and endurance of sTec’s SSD technology with Windows Storage Server 2012 storage clustering, virtualization and management features – all within a cost-effective hardware configuration.

With up to 96TB of storage per appliance, the s3000 is an addition to sTec’s solid-state storage product portfolio of performing and reliable enterprise SSD drives and caching software. Furthermore,it demonstrates sTec’s commitment to providing a range of tailored solid-state storage solutions, directly to the enterprise or through the company’s growing global partner program.

"In providing customized SSD solutions to meet our customers’ storage requirements, we discovered a significant opportunity for an sTec-developed appliance that blends the power and performance of sTec SSDs with the capabilities and widespread deployment of Windows Storage Server 2012," said Ali Zadeh, corporate SVP and CMO, and GM of the systems and software sroup, sTec. "The s3000 is an ideal solution for IT managers looking to tailor their data centers to meet the demanding performance needs of their data-intensive applications."

"Windows Storage Server 2012 introduced industry-leading innovations in storage, and sTec is building on these advances," said Brian Hillger, director, server and tools marketing, Microsoft. "sTec’s s3000 solid-state storage appliance takes advantage of Windows Storage Server 2012’s range of features to give enterprises worldwide an advanced storage platform."

"The enterprise-storage market is ripe for leveraging advances in SSDs and OSs that provide powerful solutions to IT professionals’ greatest challenges: storage management, clustering and virtualization – all within a reasonable budget," said Jim Bagley, senior analyst, Storage Strategies NOW, an industry analyst firm covering the IT industry. "sTec has aligned its solid-state storage expertise with this trend, as the s3000 was developed around Windows Storage Server 2012 for a tight coupling of enterprise storage and a standardized software platform."

As with all sTec solid-state storage solutions, the s3000 is architected for enterprise storage, enabling it to address the critical-data requirements of industries such as oil and gas, government, telecommunications, and cloud computing. With a large in-house team of storage, application and data center experts, sTec is able to work directly with customers to develop approaches for tailoring their data centers to incorporate the s3000 along with its other SSD solutions.

With performance as high as 1.2 million IO/s and featuring sTec SAS SSDs with up to twice the endurance of competing drives, the s3000 harnesses the power of sTec SSD technology to reduce application execution time and increase real-time access to high-demand, shared assets. By building the s3000 for Windows Storage Server 2012, the company is bringing to market a performance storage appliance that can be integrated with existing storage systems, enhance traditional file-serving capabilities, and extend hypervisors such as Hyper-V and file-based storage for application workloads such as, SQL Server and SharePoint. The s3000 is particularly applicable in VDI environments and those requiring performance-intensive I/O deployments to achieve higher virtualization consolidation factors.

The s3000 provides continuous availability and redundancy through Windows Server 2012 Storage Spaces, and enables hot-swapping of drives and power supplies. It offers flexible, unified storage and data reduction through de-duplication and thin provisioning. Additionally, it is scalable; it can be configured with one or two 19-inch rack-mountable shelves, each accommodating 24 SSDs, and can scale up to eight interconnected appliances for a total of 768TB of solid-state storage.