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Dataram, which ranks only a few notches below IBM and HP in IT business longevity (42 years), has introduced a new storage optimization appliance with rather fantastic claims: Chief Technologist Jason Caulkins told The Station that it will deliver 10x-30x performance improvements to existing applications.
If you could plug in a box that would speed up your storage workflow by that much, and wouldn’t disrupt anything in the system, would you look at it? Sure you would.
The XcelaSAN storage optimization appliance energizes existing storage systems by transparently applying intelligent caching algorithms that serve the most active block-level data from high speed solid-state storage, creating an intelligent, virtual solid-state SAN, Caulkins said.
“The question is no longer ‘How can I benefit from solid state storage?’ but ‘How do I best implement solid state in my existing infrastructure?'” Caulkins said. “XcelaSAN enables organizations with performance-intensive applications to seamlessly add a dynamic, intelligent solid state storage tier to their existing SAN environment.”
XcelaSAN accesses under-utilized disk capacity and optimizes the data flow to and from it. Also, as the customer’s storage infrastructure consolidates or otherwise is upgraded, XcelaSAN adjusts to work directly with those new components — automatically.
The XcelaSAN connects to a storage network using eight 4Gb/s Fibre Channel ports and can connect to the storage switch fabric or directly to back-end storage. It features hot-swappable, redundant power supplies, ECC, chip kill, internal mirrored flash drives and active-active SAN configurations, with no single point of failure. The XcelaSAN installs in about an hour with no new host software required. The system is managed through a Web-based browser for user-friendly operation, Caulkins said.
The XcelaSAN begins shipping during Q4 in the United States and in Q2 2010 throughout Europe and Asia. Pricing stars at $65,000 and will be available through select resellers. For more information, go here.
This is simply another example — among many — of where storage is going. We refer you to a story The Station wrote on this topic at the end of last year. Admins are pushing fewer buttons, installing less software, and toting around less hardware because the quality and capaciousness of these new products is so improved over the last generation.
And it’s all good.