DataCore: Analytics Service, Flexible Hyperconverged Appliance, New Capabilities in SDS

DataCore Software Corp. announced DataCore ONE, its vision for storage infrastructure, designed to accelerate the adoption of SDS in enterprise data centers, the cloud and edge computing; centralizing command and control of different classes of storage spanning primary, secondary and archive.

It also announced the availability of a number of components that help make this vision a reality, including a flexible hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) appliance, subscription-based licensing, a new cloud-based analytics service, and enhancements to its software-defined storage technology.

Central to the ONE vision is the new cloud-based predictive analytics engine, DataCore Insight Services (DIS), that provides actionable insights from a 360° view of infrastructure-wide storage.

The SaaS control plane draws on telemetry and the collective learnings from thousands of customers around the globe for early problem detection, best practice recommendations and capacity planning. The combination of ML and AI detects current or foreseeable anomalies in the data storage infrastructure, while the built-in recommendation engine directs designated individuals to the appropriate corrective actions.

The prescribed steps are automated and may be executed remotely from the same web user interface, or performed on-premises behind the firewall, as site-specific security policies dictate. The resulting value is expressed as reduced downtime, faster response, higher efficiencies and substantial cost savings.

Additionally, containerized applications, VMs and bare metal hosts can benefit from virtual storage pools that automatically place hot, moderate and cold data in the most appropriate class of storage.

Architectural flexibility to eliminate silos and lock-in
The new family of DataCore HCI-Flex appliances combine the simplicity of hyperconverged systems with the flexibility of SDS at a competitive price-performance point.

Customers can choose from multiple 1U and 2U configurations with either VMware vSphere or Microsoft Hyper-V pre-installed. All the data services of SDS are included such as smart caching, thin provisioning, dynamic-auto-tiering, and Parallel I/O acceleration, which delivers up to 500% storage performance improvements.

An smart deployment wizard gets the HCI-Flex appliance up and running in a matter of minutes. Once deployed, the appliance can pool and manage internal storage, and also external storage systems as well, regardless of vendor or underlying technology.

The HCI-Flex appliance also enables users to independently scale compute and storage, based on business needs. The flexible deployment model helps eliminate silos and vendor lock-in so customers can transition to HCI on their own terms with confidence. In ROBO and edge computing environments, a synchronously mirrored pair ensures availability without the complexity and cost of 3-node clusters – and is flexible enough to add a third asynchronous replica to a central on-premises location or to a public cloud.

“We’ve heard from many IT leaders around the world about the challenges they face with multiple storage silos and the desire to fully realize the promise of software-defined storage by unifying them under a single intelligent layer. With DataCore ONE, we are delivering on this vision,” said Gerardo A. Dada, CMO, DataCore. “Building on the company’s vast inventory of intellectual property and patents, we are presenting this unified architecture to solidify DataCore as a complete and incredibly flexible software-defined storage platform that will help diverse IT environments achieve the maximum value from storage investments, simplify management, and be ready for the technologies and challenges of the future.”

Intuitive workflows for provisioning, safeguarding, and monitoring
Featuring an extensive UI redesign, firm’s latest software release includes new automation capabilities to help free ITops from procedurally-intensive manual tasks. Now, they can command and control the comprehensive set of data services from a bird’s-eye view through intuitive workflows for provisioning, safeguarding, and monitoring the entire storage infrastructure.

A complete REST API library encourages programmability and further integration with third-party products. New encryption-at-rest technology brings advanced security measures across pools of diverse storage arrays, using military-grade XTS-AES 256-bit encryption algorithms that can be applied across different storage systems. It contrasts with other error-prone approaches that require multiple device-specific runbooks. There are other enhancements in the software release including improved VVOLs management, streamlined deployment, and increased resiliency for metro-cluster environments.

“IT leaders are now counting on software-defined storage to resolve many upcoming challenges… I&O leaders are drawn to software-defined storage for the flexibility of deployment choices (data center, edge, public cloud), as well as the ability to deploy it on industry-standard hardware,” writes Julia Palmer, research VP, Gartner. “By decoupling the software from the industry-standard hardware, I&O leaders can maintain hardware for a longer period without being forced to upgrade and migrate, while avoiding hardware vendor lock-in and forklift upgrades. The flexible pay-as-you-go purchasing model of software-defined storage can also help realize cost-efficiencies.”

More pricing options
DataCore’s new subscription-based model is designed for organizations eager to reduce capital expenditures. Customers can now choose between perpetual or subscription licenses. Both include support and software updates. All licenses are based on capacity with price per terabyte irrespective of number of nodes used for deployment flexibility.