News

posted on 01 July 2008 14:06

Pillar Data has announced a new, top-of-the-range, Axiom 600 system offering 99.999% availability and an expanded set of storage templates for different applications. It is also available in a dual system, zero-downtime 600MC configuration.

There are new processors and additional I/O capability for the main controller (Slammer). Existing Axiom 500 users can upgrade to the 600 by replacing their Slammer. Maximum raw storage capacity is 1.6 petabytes.

The Axiom 600 has, Pillar claims, the single best $/IOP rating in the industry, supports 50 percent more virtual machines than competitive products, and offers higher application-Oracle database throughput by writing data in 1MB 'wide stripes.' 

Mark Salser, An Oracle SVP, said: ““With this new capability, Pillar Axiom can integrate with Oracle’s ASM, as well as write data in 1MB stripes, the exact way our applications prefer it. Pillar’s 1MB striping with ASM in a RAID 5 configuration is a significant development and should help drive down the cost and complexity of customer solutions.  Pillar has always integrated well with Oracle, and today’s announcement is another proof point to how closely the companies work together.”

There are new storage profiles which tune storage in terms of controller processing and memory and I/O bandwidth so that different applications receive appropriate levels of storage quality of service from a single Axiom system.

Pillar has added new profiles for VMware, multiple Oracle applications, VTL deployments, Microsoft Exchange, SQL, and a host of others. These pre-configured and user-customizable profiles allow the user to optimize their Pillar Axiom systems for specific applications simply by selecting the appropriate profiles from a pull down menu in the management GUI.

The Oracle wide stripe and new storage profiles are available for the Axiom 500 and 300 as well.

Steve Duplessie, an Enterprise Strategy Group analyst, said: “Making your storage optimized for your application seems obvious, but it isn't the way it happens.  Mostly, it is one size fits all - take it or leave it.  I really like the idea of storage that changes to fit the application environment, and the fact that Pillar is willing to guarantee it speaks volumes."

Like the existing Axiom 500 and 300 systems the 600 offers SAN (storage area network), NAS (network-attached storage) or both, iSCSI and WORM (write-once read many) storage, either Fibre Channel or serial ATA (SATA) drives or both, distributed and space-efficient RAID protection, self-guided maintenance, and up to 80 percent storage utilization - double the industry average in Pillar's view.

In addition the Pillar Axiom/Oracle Automatic Storage  Management integration with Oracle Database 10g takes the guesswork out of database tuning, simplifies storage management, and delivers optimal database I/O performance automatically.

The Axiom 600's 99.999 percent availability means less than five minutes of downtime per year, per system.

A Pillar of the Enterprise

Richard Villars, VP of Storage Systems research at IDC, said: “Storage systems must address the fast expanding and increasingly diverse storage needs of data centers by delivering greater efficiency, more scalability, higher utilization rates, and more sophisticated data management capabilities that work seamlessly with business applications. With solutions like Pillar’s Axiom 600 that focus on delivering more powerful, flexible, and intelligent storage systems, data center executives will be in a better position to respond to their organization's evolving application requirements.”

Mike Workman, Pillar Data's chairman and CEO, said: "With the Axiom 600 and 600MC, Pillar is now competing at a whole new level, allowing us to gain a greater foothold in the enterprise market where we’ve had success against our more entrenched competitors. By deploying Pillar Axiom, customers can now derive maximum performance, functionality and industry leading utilization rates – and we’re the only ones in the industry to guarantee it.”

Download a datasheet for the new system below.

The Axiom 600 and the Axiom 600MC are currently available worldwide, through both Pillar and authorized channel partners. An entry-level configuration starts at approximately $80,000.

^{[Chris Mellor.]}

Download file: Axiom 600 data sheet.pdf