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A startup last week launched a distributed storage product that focuses on software to place more data at the edge of the network, which would result in expedited data delivery and improved end-user productivity.
Storigen Systems Inc. unveiled its Edge Storage Manager, a Linux-based turnkey offering that includes NAS (network-attached storage) components from Intel Corp. and Maxtor Corp. installed at the network edge instead of being centralized in a server room.
A layer above that—a software hybrid of Storigens technology combined with embedded technologies from iMimic Networking Inc., RepliWeb Inc. and Starbak Communications Inc.—controls content-delivery features.
Focusing all of that on quality of service inside the file system results in vastly quicker file access for users, targeted for unstructured static files and for vertical markets, said Dennis Hoffman, co-founder and president of Storigen, and Rick Gillett, co-founder and chief technology officer.
“We feel were a complementary extension to storage,” Gillett said. “Were coming from the customer side going back in” to the network.
Unlike many other startups, Storigen is not aiming to replace existing equipment, Gillett said. Today, its sold as a NAS/software bundle, but Storigen will likely sell its parts separately in the future, through OEMs and resellers, he said.
Later this year, Storigen, in Lowell, Mass., will add clustering; block-level access is being considered. The 70-person company has made two customers public so far, but “there are several more than are noted here,” Gillett said.
One of those customers is Seitel Inc., a Houston-based seismic data provider to the petroleum business. The company runs 1.4 petabytes of data, mostly on EMC Corp.s Symmetrix systems, connected to Oracle Corp.s Oracle9i database. Seitels data catalog, until last month, was mailed on tapes to potential customers. Now Storigens product helps Seitel put its catalog online. “Its doing my three-nines storage. The product is solid in its current state. … It has its place,” said Chris Pohto, vice president of global operations and technology at Seitel.
Higher-capacity systems and the ability to connect Storigen to other companies hardware is a priority, Pohto said.
Storigens entry-level systems of 60GB IDE-type drives and 80M-bps throughput cost $7,000. A high-end data center version with 584GB and 1MB-per-second throughput or a version with 1,280GB drives and 500M-bps throughput starts at $66,000.