Winchester Systems Entering Into All Flash Array Starting at Under $30,000

Winchester Systems Inc. introduced an all-flash array, using 2.5″ SSDs, called FlashDisk AFA.

The product is a flash-optimized, 14th generation product with a 20-year field-proven architecture and tight embedded kernel.

It provides a high performance SSD solution that competes on a dollar per gigabyte basis without the need for expensive and complex appliances that rely on compression and de-duplication in large configurations to reduce costs. The company describes this approach as ‘Simply Faster.’

FlashDisk AFA is designed to provide 487,000 IO/s continuous performance for random access applications in an external storage unit with cost per IO/s in the $0.25/IO/s range. It delivers capacity in the $2/GB range in native format without compression or de-duplication.

“The FlashDisk AFA is focused on continuous high performance and delivers 2 to 8 times the IO/s per dollar than appliance solutions that need compression and de-duplication appliances to make them viable,” according to Joe Sanzio, company’s CTO. “Without the expensive appliance, FlashDisk AFA offers a substantially lower initial cost of entry for SMBs and departmental environments,” he explained, “while still providing low incremental expansion costs since there is no expensive and risky software.”

Sanzio, a 20-year veteran designer, summarized succinctly: “FlashDisk AFA is simple and it is faster – and it is less expensive and more reliable too.”

The FlashDisk AFA base unit holds up to (24) 2.5″ SSDs with capacities ranging from 400GB to 3.84TB each to provide 9.6TB to 92TB in the base unit.

For higher capacity, each FlashDisk AFA offers up to two expansion shelves bringing total capacity to 276TB per system with 72 SSDs. Multiple FlashDisk AFA systems can be managed from a single pane of glass using the embedded GUI, FlashDisk Global Manager 3, which can also manage the company’s traditional FlashDisk RAID Disk Arrays using standard HDDs.

FlashDisk AFA supports SSDs with a variety of endurance capabilities to optimize cost to I/O intensity. SSD endurance is measured in Drive Writes per Day or DWD. SSDs offered include units that start with 0.5 DWD for light read and write intensity and scale up to 30 DWD for the most intense database applications and ‘hot spots’ found in a variety of data intensive applications. To make best use of this variety of cost and performance tradeoffs, FlashDisk AFA support tiered storage for up to four separate tiers of data so that the IT manager can easily optimize cost, performance and endurance.

The systems operations in multiple environments including FC 8Gb or 16Gb as a SAN or on a LAN with 1GbE, 10GbE or 40GbE. It is also available with 12Gb SAS ports to create a switchless ‘SAN-In-A-Box’ with direct SAS connections.

Prices for FlashDisk AFA, all flash arrays, starts at under $30,000.

Products are available and delivery is 2-3 weeks.