Cleversafe (IBM) With Software Defined/Hardware Aware Storage Approach

Cleversafe, an IBM company, announced its software-defined/hardware aware storage approach to enable organizations with massive-scale data demands to easily take advantage of software-defined storage (SDS) with a solution that integrates with industry-standard hardware.

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The company’s approach reduces cost and complexity by enabling enterprises to manage their storage hardware and software from a single management system. The company also announced newly certified hardware platforms, giving enterprise customers greater deployment flexibility.

SDS solutions that separate storage software from hardware promise greater hardware flexibility, but the burden of software and hardware integration is left to the customer which can quickly become a costly and complex challenge. The company’s software defined/hardware aware storage approach delivers interoperability and unified management between storage software and certified hardware platforms, from a single interface. This integration into existing IT environments delivers active monitoring of disk drives, power supplies and other critical components, enabling higher system availability and simplified system management. Further, the solution provides a unique ‘disk lifecycle management’ feature that attempts to predict drive failures and migrate data to neighboring drives before the drive actually fails and data is lost. This approach reduces the amount of data that must be rebuilt due to disk failure, increasing system reliability, availability and manageability.

“Cleversafe’s software-defined/hardware aware storage approach gives us the flexibility to choose whichever standard hardware best suits our needs,” said Piers Nash, MBA, PhD, director, business development and outreach, Center for Data Intensive Science, University of Chicago. “This approach removes hidden costs and complexity associated with some SDS solutions and enables us to manage our data sets from one management platform with greater data reliability and availability.“

“Cleversafe has always worked closely with clients to ensure that our software platform integrates seamlessly with their industry-standard hardware,” said Russ Kennedy, SVP, product strategy and customer solutions, Cleversafe. “With these enhancements, we’re ensuring that it’s easier than ever for our clients to deploy an SDS solution with industry-standard hardware, enabling unmatched flexibility, less complexity and greater efficiency at the petabyte level and beyond.“

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The company’s approach simplifies system upgrades, capacity expansion and system relocation. The software-defined/hardware aware approach allows for faster hardware refresh to new certified higher-capacity technologies and streamlines the transition to newer generations of hardware or new hardware brands over the life of the system – all while maintaining 100% availability of the data.

To date, the firm has certified more than 30 platforms. With today’s announcement, the company’ list of certified platforms includes the HPE Apollo 4510, HPE Apollo 4530 and HPE Apollo 4200 servers, big data-optimized servers from Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE). These HPE servers, along with the Seagate CP-2584 server and the Supermicro 4U SSG-6048R-E1CR36L/H SuperStorage Servers, have been added to the growing list of hardware platforms certified for use in deploying Cleversafe storage solutions.

“Cleversafe’s software defined/hardware aware storage system provides customers with greater deployment flexibility and the assurance that the technology will seamlessly integrate with their existing IT environments,” said Scott Sinclair, analyst, ESG. “These updates further Cleversafe’s position as an innovator in the object-based storage market and a company that is truly dedicated to providing customers with a proven solution for their data challenges.“