Kaminario: Fifth-Generation of K2 All-Flash Primary Storage

Kaminario, Inc. announced the fifth-generation K2 (K2 v5) all-flash primary storage array.

K2 v5 is a cost-effective, all software-inclusive storage solution, with average pricing $2/GB usable and guaranteed effective capacity.

In addition to consistent and predictable performance across single or multiple workload environments, K2 v5 delivers on all three critical needs of enterprise storage; resiliency (guarantees 24/7/365 demand), macro efficiency (reduces CAPEX and OPEX by more than 50%) and business agility (drives 10 times more productivity).

In order to keep up with modern data center trends and evolving business needs, organizations must harness the power of SSD technology to increase the flexibility, performance and consistency in their storage solutions.

According to Valdis Filks, research director with Gartner Inc., in the November 12, 2013 report, Use SSDs Rather Than Disk Striping to Improve Storage Performance and Cut Costs ($195), “Lower-cost SSD arrays with higher levels of availability, primary deduplication and manageability have matured, and can be cost-effectively used to replace disk-striping configurations.”

With K2 v5, Kaminario provides enterprises with an affordable, all software-inclusive solution that encompasses these features.

The fifth-generation K2 is an all-flash storage solution that can be implemented in data centers as primary storage at a lower cost than HDD based or hybrid storage arrays.

With an efficient architecture, highest capacity utilization
and lowest metadata footprint,
K2’s differentiators translate into customer benefits, including:

• Flexible, Consistent and Predictable Scale of Performance and Capacity: The all-flash array supporting both scale-up and scale-out architectures, allows organizations to start small (and only pay for what they need), and grow capacity and performance based on their needs. Patent pending global variable block size algorithms automatically adapt to single or mixed workloads, thus simplifying the customers’ combined OLTP, OLAP, big data and virtual infrastructure and saving on server hardware and software licensing costs.
• Flexible and Scalable Data Reduction: Also supporting selectable global inline deduplication, an advantage for virtual environments and ability to turn it off which is an advantage for database environments. Global inline deduplication, inline compression, thin provisioning and 87.5% utilization K-RAID lead to the highest capacity utilization within an organization.
• Comprehensive Enterprise Resiliency: Native application-aware, high performance, space efficient and scalable snapshots, native asynchronous snapshots-based replication, non-disruptive hardware and software upgrades, built-in redundancy and dual parity K-RAID provide high level of availability.
• Proactive and Comprehensive HealthShield: Cloud-based call-home, analytics and events-based alerts are preventive, predictive, insightful and actionable, allowing organizations to avoid unexpected downtime, increase overall productivity and reduce costs. Automated capacity management improves uptime, while comprehensive dashboards and alerts enable capacity forecasting and performance planning.
• Manageability/Tight Ecosystem Integration: Unlike legacy storage arrays, K2 v5 is simple to use and does not require a dedicated storage administrator or special training and certifications. Automated operations with no setup or tuning required – including an intuitive GUI, a set of RESTful APIs, and support for Microsoft VSS, Oracle RMAN, vCenter plug-in and VAAI – simplify the day-to-day operations and reduce OPEX.

“In a noisy, newer market such as all-flash storage where ‘achieved-volume’ can trump ‘actual-value’ it is interesting to see quite how much Kaminario has quietly achieved with its new K2 v5 offering,” said Mark Peters, senior analyst, ESG. “With K2 v5, Kaminario brings together a slew of important capabilities that meet evolving storage pain points without compromise. It manages to deliver a compelling balance of dramatically good economics (its stated average price of $2/GB is certainly eye-catching), easy-to-deploy full-functionality, and guaranteed flexible scalability, enabling its customers to start small and scale performance and capacity as their needs evolve; these are capabilities which deserve to be heard.”

“Managing the virtual management stack in today’s IT environments is incredibly complex, with enterprises using a number of disparate tools to manage their on-site VMs and private or public cloud data centers. Intigua solves this complexity in large-scale, distributed data center environments,” said Shai Toren, GM, Intigua. “We selected Kaminario K2 v5 for our enterprise storage needs because it has one of the most efficient architectures we’ve seen on the market, allowing us to maximize our storage capacity of 300TB at a footprint of just 4U, keep pace with the demands of our customers, and simplify the management stack operations in different workload environments. In addition, K2 v5 enables us to reduce costs to under $2 per usable gigabyte since we’re able to minimize the average amount of storage that is required for each VM. These cost savings are significant for our environment, where we test environments of thousands of virtual servers. We were able to deploy over 7,000 virtual servers on a single K-Block configuration of K2 v5, with a data reduction rate of 20:1.”

“Modern data centers have raised the stakes for storage vendors, requiring them to be more agile, scalable and cost-effective than ever before. They’ve also led to a surge in demand for all-flash array solutions that can deliver on these business needs better than legacy arrays,” said Eric Burgener, research director, IDC’s storage practice. “All-flash arrays like Kaminario’s meet storage performance requirements with generally far fewer storage devices than traditional spinning disk-based arrays, requiring lower power consumption, floor space, and backup infrastructure that translate to a compelling economic proposition.”

“We are pleased to be partnering with Kaminario to offer their fifth-generation K2 all-flash primary storage array to our federal customers. With budget pressures, our customers need solutions that can boost performance without significant investment and this solution does it,” said David Gilchrist, president and CEO, Four Points Technology, LLC, a Service Disabled Veteran Owned Small Business (SDVOSB), federal government contractor.

“K2 v5 brings together our key learnings and customer success to deliver the most scalable, intelligent, cost-effective and data services rich, all-flash primary storage solution on the market,” said Dani Golan, founder and CEO, Kaminario. “Enterprises can now reap the benefits of a solution that’s simple to use and cheaper than legacy HDD options. As we like to say around the office – storage done better.”

The K2 v5 is available with the exception of the replication capabilities (which will be made available in H2 2014). K2 comes with all inclusive-software pricing (no extra licensing or charges for software features), and the hard guarantee that Kaminario will provide free hardware if guaranteed effective capacity needs are not met. Finally, forklift upgrades are eliminated with the ability to mix and match controllers and SSDs.