StorTrends Hybrid and All Flash Storage Solution Business Grew 500%

StorTrends, trademark of American Megatrends, announced the close of a record year as sales for its storage appliances grew by 500% with the introduction of its hybrid (HFA) and all flash arrays (HFA).
 
StorTrends 3500i flash storage delivers a SAN combining SSD caching and SSD tiering into a single storage appliance. Optimized to support VMware, Hyper-V, Citrix and RHEV enterprises of all sizes, the 3500i is available as a hybrid or full flash array, and delivers enterprise performance and reliability at an affordable price point.
 
“The flash-based storage market, which includes both AFAs and HFAs, is on fire. In the first half of 2014, the combined markets grew at noticeably higher rates than what IDC had forecast it to grow with previous projections. Individually, each market segment also outgrew our 2013 forecast projections,” said Eric Burgener, research director, storage, IDC. “End users are learning that flash storage provides improved performance, higher reliability, longer endurance and compelling TCO when deployed at scale, as well as enterprise data services. Clearly, if you are an end user, you should be considering flash-based arrays when the time has come to retire your existing enterprise storage platforms.“
 
StorTrends Key Milestones:

• Premieres 3500i SSD Array – It offers a set of features including SSD caching, SSD tiering, Automatically Tiered Volumes (ATV), Automated Data Tiering, and replication with WAN optimization. These features, together with the combination of SSD and HDD technology in a 3U configuration, deliver up to 64TB of storage capacity within the 3U and expansion capacity of up to 256TB. The SAN storage solution features hot-swappable dual controllers with active/active or active/passive HA and redundant, hot-swappable power supply units.
• Introduces StorTrends iDATA IT Infrastructure Assessment Tool – a free intelligent data analysis tracking application (iDATA) that provides a comprehensive and accurate assessment of IT infrastructure statistics such as performance, capacity and throughput requirements, in order to find and assess pain points, before they become disruptive, as well as to enable IT professionals to proactively and accurately plan for future IT investment/deployment.
• Launches StorTrends PROFIT Program – offering high margins to allow channel partners to capitalize on the demand for cost-effective hybrid and/or full flash storage solutions.

Industry Lab Validations

• Taneja Group Technology Validation – “We observed in our hands-on technology validation of the StorTrends 3500i array that StorTrends has crafted SSD into a mature, field-proven, and well-architected storage system. With a comprehensive set of storage features and an intriguingly flexible ability to integrate SSDs with the StorTrends cache and tiering architecture, the 3500i showed us that it is ready to deliver superb performance, extreme versatility, and serious value for mid-range storage customers,” said Taneja Group founder, Arun Taneja, when asked about the report. “The NetNet is there is no need to look for alternatives to make solid state more affordable and practical for the mainstream – with the AMI StorTrends 3500i, it is clearly here.”
• 3500i Validated by StorageReview Enterprise Lab – During independent testing the StorTrends 3500i storage array was deemed a “powerful and easy to deploy hybrid storage platform built for high performance and maximum capacity” – demonstrating top-of-the-class performance in benchmark conducted against well-known tier 1 storage vendors. “The AMI StorTrends 3500i provides businesses with a powerful and easy to deploy 3U hybrid storage platform built for high performance and maximum capacity. It didn’t take long for the StorTrends 3500i to demonstrate its top-class performance during our benchmarking. In the first application test, which measured performance with VMmark, the StorTrends 3500i posted excellent results. The StorTrends 3500i cluster was at or near the top of the pack, slipping ever so slightly at the 10th tile. In the 15k and 30k virtual-user SQL Server benchmark, the 3500i was easily the best of the bunch especially when measuring the average latency. The 3500i recorded only 41ms latency during 30k virtual users benchmark where the second place system posted 133ms; a significant gap in responsiveness. The StorTrends 3500i is able to achieve all of these impressive numbers for a variety of reasons, one of the biggest being how they handle flash. First off, the array offers both caching (a copy of the hot data on SSDs) and tiering (a permanent location of hot data on SSDs), which is relatively rare among the hybrid storage array vendors. Most provide one or the other, which certainly adds to top-line performance, but as we see here, there can be a benefit to using both.  AMI is also using higher capacity SSDs for tiering, at 4x800GB in RAID-10, 1.6TB usable in a 16-bay system is well above what many competitive systems offer. The drives are also modern, many of the large storage vendors are using SSD technology that’s very stable but a few years older. The only thing really working against the 3500i is lack of awareness in a crowded market; that likely won’t last long though as the 3500i really shines.”
• StorTrends iDATA Named Invaluable Tool by SSG-NOW – For accurately assessing an IT infrastructure in order to find and eliminate pain points, avoid business disruption and make informed storage investment decisions.

“We needed something that was going to perform at the level our SQL servers needed. The specification certainly seemed to be there and pricewise StorTrends compared favorably against other devices in its same class. We found that metrics such as IO/s, throughput, capacity and replication – as well as the flexibility of being able to connect to multiple devices of StorTrends products were higher than our current solution and in the range that we wanted to be,”
said Phil Blakely, network and systems administrator, RTI.

“I cannot stress enough how good the customer service is. The StorTrends team has done nothing but accommodate our needs and bend over backwards for us. Everything has performed as they described and I have never had the feeling of being over-promised or under-delivered,” said Tony Maynard, manager of IT, Charlotte Radiology PA.
 
“The StorTrends array had the specific capabilities we were looking for, the integration with Hyper-V and a price tag that was much less than we anticipated,” said Andrew Marenghi, IT director, National Fish & Seafood, Inc.  

“When I started here there were already two StorTrends appliances that had been here for about four to five years. They ran flawlessly, untouched for about two more years. I didn’t even have to reboot the boxes. I really paid very little attention to them. So, when it was time to add storage for our video project – I was already looking in StorTrends’ direction,” said Clint Bourdeau, network systems specialist, University of Western Ontario.

“Indeed, 2014 was a stellar year for StorTrends.  Driven by our number one asset – our people, combined with the industry’s top storage solution – StorTrends, and relationships with the channel’s superstars as the icing-on-top, we grew our customer base with companies large and small, across virtually every industry vertical, around the world,” said Justin Bagby, director, StorTrends. “We look forward to this year, as we continue to hone our product roadmap in order to innovate and deliver the features our customers require to accelerate application performance, protect and ensure data availability, and decrease overall cost and complexity.”