Sphere 3D’s Overland-Tandberg With SnapServer Hybrid and All Flash Array

Overland-Tandberg, the unified storage brand of Sphere 3D Corp., announced a release across its SnapServer product line.

Designed to allow IT departments to modernize their data center, the SnapServer Hybrid and all-flash array solutions continue in the SnapServer brand’s tradition of providing performance for thousands of organizations of all sizes.

The overall market for flash continues to show strong growth. During the first quarter of 2017, sales of all flash array jumped 48% on a year-on-year basis, per the latest figures from market research firm Dell’Oro Group. In total, the category generated over $1.3 billion for storage vendors. Also, the figures predict that all-flash array revenue will grow approximately 40% in 2017 to reach nearly $7 billion.

This major refresh for the SnapServer platform increases the value proposition for new customers and provides a path for existing customers to benefit from proprietary Guardian OS (GOS), as well as the additional support for all-flash array and hybrid array deployments.

“The digital transformation for customers of every size and the role that a modern data center can play for business efficiency and resiliency cannot be overstated:” said Peter Tassiopoulos, president, Sphere 3D. “The introduction of the new SnapServer capabilities can go a long way to help ensure that this transformation takes place with a robust and secure platform for many years to come.“

The SnapServer flash and hybrid array offerings allow customers to choose either an all-flash deployment or a hybrid one. The hybrid array allows for the creation of separate volumes, one with flash and the other with HDDs, and then assign the volumes for workflows with different performance requirements. This flexibility allows, for example, the ability to assign the flash volume to a transactional high IO/s workload and the HDD volume to a regular file share workload.

SnapServer with RDX external drive

The SnapServer flash and hybrid array NAS solutions utilize the Guardian OS, an enterprise OS based on the XFS filesystem.

Some of the GOS OS highlights and features include:

• Support for both an all-flash appliance and a mix of HDD’s and flash in a single appliance.

• Multi-patented heterogeneous and secure replication, called ‘Snap Encrypted Continuous Replication’ (Snap ECR) for replication support across multiple platforms such as Windows, Linux and SnapServers that can be centrally managed with support for one to many and many to one replication.

• Active Directory (AD) integration on a granular level, allowing for SnapServer to join as a member server and store native access control lists (ACL’s) on the file system to preserve a secure environment.

• Performance snapshots with SnapServer FSA (File System Aware) for efficient space utilization while retaining performance.

• Snap DynamicRAID for growing volumes, and with the ability to shrink volumes as needs change.

• Integration with the company’s RDX removable disk-based solutions, allowing policy driven scheduled and triggered backups to RDX removable disk systems.

• Interoperable with SnapCLOUD for hybrid cloud offerings utilizing SnapCLOUD in Microsoft Azure for cloud burst and to serve as a failover site.

SnapServer flash and hybrid array is available this month with support for varying capacities that would meet a range of customer performance needs. SnapServer is also backed by the company’s OverlandCare for 24x7x365 technical support.