StorONE arrays adopt external flash JBODs in flash program

StorONE’s 9x ROI on flash program combines a StorONE disk drive array with an external SSD enclosure to provide auto-tiering of data to deliver flash performance and disk economics.

The idea is to provide a 2-tier system with hot data automatically tiered to flash, using live access patterns, and warm or cold data retired to disk. StorONE says you can add one of its disk drive-based S1 arrays to a flash JBOD (Just a Bunch of Drives) and the array OS will institute an auto-tiering system with intelligent data placement so that customers can “dramatically increase the value they derive from flash storage while maintaining all-flash-class performance for data in active use.” This 9x ROI program enables enterprises to increase effective (flash) storage capacity by up to nine times but does not use data reduction to lower flash capacity data usage.

StorONE CEO Gal Naor said: “As the founder of StorWize, we were the first to bring real-time, inline compression to enterprise storage. I know both worlds extremely well. Data reduction has its place, but it is inherently dependent on the data itself. Auto-tiering works on every type of data and delivers certainty. That’s why it’s the more resilient and correct architectural approach.”

StorONE claims that, “by combining an existing flash tier with a lower-cost HDD tier, StorONE automatically manages data placement in real time, keeping hot data on flash while moving warm and cold data to HDD transparently and continuously. The result is tier-one performance where it matters, and tier-two economics where it doesn’t.”

This is somewhat similar to VAST Data’s Amplify program in which existing SSDs are qualified and added to a VAST Data system to increase its capacity. Amplify operates at the drive level while StorONE’s 9x ROI engages at the SSD enclosure level. This becomes the flash performance tier of a unified storage system. StorONE SW continuously and automatically promotes and demotes data based on live access patterns without application changes and without manual intervention.

V3.9 of StorONE’s S1 Enterprise Storage Platform introduced a TierONE feature which dynamically optimizes data placement across SSD and HDD tiers, with AI assistance. StorONe says TierONE “cuts storage costs by over 50 percent for inactive data without compromising performance, manages data movement between tiers in the background and allows users to configure flash usage for active data held in the flash tier.” 

We’re told that the StorONE architecture is designed for direct, inline writes that do not depend on DRAM-intensive buffering, reducing overall memory requirements while sustaining consistent write performance.

Now StorONE is using the TierONE feature to bring external flash JBODs into the StorONE storage domain.

Naor says: “The 9x ROI on Flash Program is about breaking the flash bottleneck, providing organizations with a way to grow capacity intelligently without paying the all-flash tax.”

The 9x ROI on Flash Program is available immediately through the StorONE platform, using StorONE S1 Enterprise Storage Platform v3.9 SP1 software.

Get a StorONE multi-tiering white paper here.