DDN SFA12KX Appliances at 48GB/s

DataDirect Networks, Inc. is supporting the largest big data, HPC, cloud and data-intensive environments with the introduction of its SFA12KX series, a fast family of storage appliance platforms.

With this release, DDN is introducing two new models of its Storage Fusion Architecture (SFA) technology, the SFA12KX and the SFA12KXE.

The SFA12KX features advanced processor technology and a optimized OS to deliver performance at up to 48GB/s and 1.4 million IO/s from a single appliance, making it the industry leader in IO/s and bandwidth. This performance boost allows customers to deploy big data solutions with the least number of systems – lowering the TCO.

The SFA12KXE leverages DDN In-Storage Processing technology to power high-performance EXAScaler and GRIDScaler parallel file systems, as well as customer applications running natively within the storage array. The SFA12KXE delivers up to 23GB/s of file system performance and eliminates external servers and storage networking for a converged approach that yields significant acquisition and management savings.

With new capabilities including DDN’s SFX application-aware flash caching, real-time I/O and Storage Fusion Fabric technology, the SFA12KX series provides customers a foundation for building storage systems that deliver performance for the most challenging big data workloads of tomorrow at the lowest overall TCO.

SFK12KX Improves Performance, Reduces Cost and Complexity,
and Accelerates Time to Innovation

• The appliances use the latest generation of Ivy Bridge family of processors and an optimized OS to achieve performance targets. This architecture enables customers to build file storage systems that scale to 1TB/s and beyond with as little as 21 arrays, allowing consolidation by as much as 10:1 when compared to competing technologies.
• The additional processing power also gives an added performance boost to virtualized applications running within the SFA12KXE, allowing customers to extract greater efficiencies from their I/O infrastructure, colocate their applications with their data and reduce the cost and complexity of storage by eliminating external server and storage networking layers.
• When combined with DDN’s SS8460 enclosures, the SFA12KX reduces data center sprawl by up to 40% as compared to even the highest density storage array offerings and requires 58% less space than competing scale-out file storage offerings.

The DDN SFA12KXE appliance will be available in Q4’13 and the SFA12KX is scheduled for availability in early 2014.

Jean-Luc Chatelain, EVP of strategy and technology, DDN, sa id: “DDN’s SFA12KX appliances are the foundation of many of the world’s most demanding and data-intensive environments, each requiring massive performance and scale without high cost. With features such as application-aware flash caching, Real-Time I/O and in-storage processing, our SFX12KX appliances will perform at up to 48GB/s, making this technology the ideal solution for organizations looking to accelerate big data applications and consolidate infrastructure while dramatically lowering the overall cost of storage ownership.”