Infinidat Expands InfiniBox Enterprise Arrays Starting at $1/GB

Infinidat Ltd. announces the expansion of its InfiniBox family of storage arrays with the addition of two new capabilities and a new mid-range model.

NAS file support (NFSv3) as a free software upgrade
NAS functionality can now be enabled on all new and existing InfiniBox systems (via a non-disruptive software upgrade) to provide enterprise unified storage. Company’s NAS capability is designed for hyper-scale workloads supporting high performance access to thousands of files and multi-petabytes of capacity on a single file system. This is a native software-based NAS implementation (completely in-house developed), not a NAS front-end bolted onto a block device.

In addition, the NAS capability supports all the same InfiniBox features provided by company’s current block storage: a single automated management console; zero latency; non-blocking high performance snapshots; thin, smart clones; self-healing HA; hybrid disk/SSD infrastructure and non-disruptive upgrades.

InfiniBox F2000, midrange storage array
Designed to fulfill the needs of businesses that have data volumes in the sub-petabyte range, the InfiniBox F2000 starts at 250TB usable capacity in an 18U configuration. It joins the InfiniBox F6000, which contains up to 2PB of usable storage in a single 42U rack form factor. Both the F2000 and F6000 deliver 99.99999% availability (less than 3s of downtime per year), low power consumption (between 3-8KW at peak), management and provisioning automation, and high performance.

Near-Sync replication
The new company’s asynchronous replication is so efficient that users can set an RPO of less than 4s. This is a unique capability when compared to competitive systems that typically deliver RPOs of minutes. Snapshots and Async Replication are included with every InfiniBox system.

“As a cloud service provider, we wanted to be able to offer our customers a high performing shared SAN solution on which they could become quickly provisioned,” said Andrew Hodes, CTO, InetU, Inc. “We found that the InfiniBox outperformed every other spinning disk and hybrid solution we tested. What was more impressive is that the InfiniBox performance was near that of an all-flash array in many benchmarks and at a fraction of the cost per GB. We conducted numerous failure tests, ranging from taking out a node to pulling multiple disks, and the InfiniBox didn’t blink an eye.“

“Infinidat’s innovative new capabilities provide companies with greater storage flexibility and convenience for a wide-variety of mission-critical and business-critical workloads,” said Jack Rondoni, VP, storage networking, Brocade Communication Systems, Inc. “Our mutual customers now have the ability to leverage these capabilities along with a variety of Brocade SAN and IP storage switches to maintain the highest levels of availability and throughput.“

InfiniBox models are scalable up to 2PB of usable storage capacity in a single 19-inch/42U rack, offer 99.99999% availability, deliver up to 750,000 IO/s, and enable high throughput of up to 12.5GB/s. The company’s systems are power-efficient, drawing a maximum of between 3-8KW at full load.

All InfiniBox storage arrays are based upon the Infinidat Storage Architecture (ISA). ISA provides software-driven storage functionality that is fully abstracted from standard X86 based hardware. This software abstraction allows the company to continuously exploit the latest hardware innovations as they become available for price/performance.

With over 100 software patents, ISA delivers:

• Simplicity – To reduce complexity, Infinidat has created a set of software tools that provide rapid provisioning, automated host configuration management, workflow best practice settings/compliance, and overall storage operations.

• Availability – End-to-end data protection, triple redundant power and data paths, snapshots and replication, hot swap upgrades and many other reliability features built in to the core OS layer.

• Capacity – InfiniBox systems start at 250TB and scale to up to 2PB of usable storage in a single rack.

There are no incremental software licensing fees with InfiniBox. All software capabilities, including the NAS and Near-Sync replication features, are included in the base price. In addition, all InfiniBox storage arrays come standard with three years of 24x7x365 maintenance.

“Many vendors in the industry have been slowly flash-optimizing their legacy arrays over time to make better and more efficient use of flash media, but Infinidat started with a clean sheet of paper to create a general purpose, hybrid storage array that very efficiently blends the use of flash and spinning disk media in an ultra-reliable, extremely high performance package targeted for dense, mixed enterprise workload consolidation,” said Eric Burgener, research director, storage, IDC. “Features in this latest release, including NFS file support and a near synchronous replication implementation, help to make this platform a great consolidation play that can simultaneously and cost-effectively support both primary and secondary storage environments based around either block or file protocols.“

“Enterprise customers are discovering the power of the InfiniBox storage solution to handle massive workloads with speed and provide ultra-high levels of availability,” said Scott Sinclair, senior analyst, Enterprise Strategy Group. “With this upgrade, Infinidat is meeting the needs of small as well as large enterprises by providing the same performance and availability as the larger capacity InfiniBox at a smaller volume scale.“

“Rome wasn’t built in a day, and neither was good enterprise storage. The key advantage Infinidat has is that the foundation of its InfiniBox storage array is extremely strong and the baseline functionality is already remarkable,” said Arun Taneja, founder and consulting analyst, Taneja Group. “With this announcement, Infinidat is adding solid capabilities that will further delight its customers.“

“Businesses depend on having rapid, ‘always on’ access to their data, as that data is critical to their survival,” said Moshe Yanai, founder and CEO, Infinidat. “With the growth of digitized data outpacing the growth of storage capacity, the market for storage continues to see rapid growth. However, the cost and complexity of storage are forcing buyers to constantly make trade-offs. To solve this problem, Infinidat has brought to market InfiniBox, a new generation of highly reliable, scalable, fast and efficient storage systems.“

The company began shipping product in late 2013 and has placed over a quarter exabyte of storage capacity in production in major enterprise data centers around the world. Company’s customers include F500 companies in finance and banking, government, healthcare, energy, and cloud services. Founded in 2011 by veteran enterprise storage visionary Moshe Yanai (EMC, XIV, IBM), the company is funded by investors TPG Growth and MII Ventures.

Infinidat unified storage (NAS and block), Near-Sync replication, and the InfiniBox complete family of systems are available (with the NAS capability available on November 15, 2015).

Pricing starts at $1/GB, including software and three years of maintenance.

InfiniBox arrays are available from the company or from one of its many channel partners or distributors.