NEC Introducing HYDRAstor HS6-4000A to Archive Long-Term Data

NEC Corporation of America announced the HYDRAstor HS6-4000A, a scale-out grid storage solution designed for long-term data archive.

It leverages HYDRAstor’s architecture, with a scalable Object Store back-end and scale-out performance to support both existing and future data growth requirements for large data archives. In addition, the HS6 series bundles global namespace functionality, and also introduces an optional high-speed image compression capability, for storage of large repositories of bitmap files.

It is NEC’s scalable distributed grid storage platform, built to modernize storage infrastructure to support long-term data retention. It has been architected to maximize capacity optimization and modular scalability, without the complexity and inherent limitations of legacy storage solutions – such as expensive, inefficient primary storage, limited scale-up NAS, virtual or physical tape, or specialized single-purpose backup or archive appliances. The HS6 series focuses on large archive environments, by incorporating additional features for long-term storage while reducing the associated costs.

Key features and capabilities:

• Modular scale-out to 165 nodes with 7.92PB RAW capacity and up to 178.2 TB/hr performance

• Advanced erasure-coded data resiliency with 1-6 levels of protection and low overhead

• Inline global dedupe and compression for storage of large archive data

• Investment protection with non-disruptive expansion and up to three generations of hardware

• Automatic distribution of data across the backend for balancing and eliminating hot spots

• HA with automatic failover across front-end nodes

• Global namespace for fast and flexible access to all data through all front-end nodes

• Data shredding capability, supporting secure erase of classified information

• Optional WAN-optimized data replication for DR

• Optional in-place data encryption for protecting secure data against unauthorized access

• Optional WORM capability, supporting automatic retention policies for regulatory compliance

• Optional high-speed image compression for efficient storage of bitmap files

“With a scale-out high performance architecture that integrates inline global deduplication and compression and advanced erasure-coded data resiliency, HYDRAstor’s technology is very well positioned to address the most stringent requirements for secure storage of long-term data archives for enterprise customers,” said Terri McClure, senior analyst, Enterprise Strategy Group. “IT is struggling with managing vast amounts of unstructured data, and growth is accelerating. HYDRAstor can help alleviate the pain of storing and managing that unstructured data with an efficient, cost effective footprint.“

In recent years, customer demand for storage capacity to support long-term data has grown. With applications such as big data analytics, digital voice and image capture driving data growth, enterprise organizations require a scalable platform to keep up with data growth. The key requirements to support environments that represent the majority of user data include modular and flexible scalability, high data resiliency, immediate access and availability, and capacity optimization to reduce footprint and overall costs. This addresses these requirements with its modular scale-out architecture to support petabyte-scale archives, advanced data resiliency and protection against up to six concurrent disk or entire node failures, HA with automatic failover and GNS across nodes, and data dedupe and compression for space reduction and lower costs. In addition, the HS6 series offers additional features to support large archive repositories, including regulatory compliance enforcement at the storage system level with shredding, WORM, and encryption capabilities.

It also introduces an optional High-speed Image Compression feature for bitmap files, based on image conversion and encoding technology developed by the company. This image codec feature delivers lossless compression for bitmap image files, while maintaining the integrity of the original data. In software compression tests using color images, compression speed was 10-40 times higher than JPEG2000 while delivering similar compression ratios, and expansion speed was 6-13 times higher. This capability is useful for applications that store large amounts of image data, such as medical imaging and monitoring systems that capture images at irregular intervals.

“The HS6-4000A further extends the value that NEC’s HYDRAstor technology brings to enterprise customers,” said Gideon Senderov, director of advanced storage, NEC Corporation of America. “This new storage solution delivers enterprise scalability, resiliency, and efficiency, while adding new capabilities such as GNS and high-speed image compression and reducing the cost point for archive environments. We will continue to respond to our customers’ needs and further push the envelope on increasing efficiency and performance with innovative solutions that maximize the value we deliver to our customers.“

The platform is available.

List price starts at $55,000 per 1GbE hybrid node, and $40,000 per storage node. The high-speed Image Compression option list price is $17,500 per node.