Articles With Pricing | *UPDATED*

Avere FXT 3800 pricing provides great value

Pittsburgh-based storage startup Avere Systems today unveiled a new appliance that employs RAM, solid-state drives (SSDs) and Serial Attached SCSI hard drives to sling files across the data center faster. Dubbed the Avere FXT 3800, the filer offers automated tiering across system memory, SSDs and traditional hard disks. Data placement is determined by current levels of activity.

The system dynamically places hot files in speedier forms of data storage like RAM and SSDs while aging files get transferred in the background to slower components, notably the system’s hard drive. The result, says Avere, is a system that performs 40 faster on SPECsfs2008 NFS benchmark tests than its predecessor, the FXT 3500.

Billed as a more cost-effective alternative to all-flash systems by the NAS optimization vendor, the Avere’s FXT 3800 Edge filer combines 7.8 TB of SAS hard drive capacity (10K RPM) with 800 GB of SSD storage, 144 GB of DRAM and 2 GB of Non-volatile random-access memory (NVRAM) — the type that keeps its data even after it is powered down.

Network connectivity is provided by two 10 GbE ports and six 1 GbE ports. In a clustered implementation, the FXT can scale up to 50 nodes.

“The performance gains and cost benefits associated with our latest FXT Edge filer demonstrate the massive advantages of a hybrid approach that can precisely match the storage media to the data being accessed,” said Ron Bianchini, President and CEO of Avere Systems. “And when deployed as part of our edge-core architecture, it also delivers the flexibility businesses need to locate storage where it makes most sense for the business.

Avere’s approach to NAS systems should appeal to enterprise IT managers that are mulling their storage options, claims Neuralytix analyst Benjamin Woo.

“With the new FXT 3800, Avere continues to be on the cutting edge of file system storage innovation and gives companies a new way to think about the way they purchase data storage. Customers can now receive the greatest amount of flexibility and choice by leveraging all four media tiers of storage, while defining the performance and efficiency requirements based on the activity of the data,” said Woo in a press remarks.

For Avere Systems CEO Ron Bianchini, SSDs, RAM and even traditional disk-based storage all have a place in today’s performance-obsessed enterprise storage market.

“The performance gains and cost benefits associated with our latest FXT Edge filer demonstrate the massive advantages of a hybrid approach that can precisely match the storage media to the data being accessed. And when deployed as part of our edge-core architecture, it also delivers the flexibility businesses need to locate storage where it makes most sense for the business,” said Bianchini in a statement.

Avere FXT 3800 plans to start selling the FXT 3800 within 30 days. Prices start at $112,500.

Nutanix Pricing, NX-1000, NX-6000 cost

Nutanix, a leading provider of hyper-efficient, massively scalable and elegantly simple datacenter infrastructure solutions, today announced two new platforms that meet the cost, performance and scale requirements to run nearly any enterprise application. Nutanix’s expanded portfolio of Virtual Computing Platforms enables IT teams to tailor and seamlessly grow their compute and storage environment to fit their individual requirements, whether for an enterprise branch office with limited on-site IT resources or core datacenters tasked with supporting an increasingly diverse and demanding set of workloads.

The NX-1000 series puts converged infrastructure within reach of small to mid-sized corporations, enterprise branch offices or retail stores at an attractive price point while also significantly streamlining IT management. The NX-6000 series allows enterprises to scale their Nutanix cluster by adding storage capacity as needed for applications with large data sets such as big data projects, high-end databases or demanding virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI).

Converged Infrastructure for the Mid-Market – the NX-1000 Series

Small to mid-sized corporations, enterprise branch offices and retail stores typically lack the specialized IT resources needed to manage traditional infrastructure built with separate servers, storage arrays and networking. Unlike other converged infrastructure solutions, which offer little more than legacy products packaged into a single chassis or cabinet, the Nutanix NX-1000 Series, like other Nutanix platforms, features a flatter datacenter architecture that eliminates the need for centralized SAN/NAS storage, thereby dramatically reducing IT complexity and simplifying management.

This new platform includes all of the functionality offered in every Nutanix Virtual Computing Platform, including software-based storage controller technology and advanced information lifecycle management (ILM) capabilities, such as flash-enabled data tiering and performance-optimized data compression. The NX-1000 also requires up to 80 percent less space and power than alternative approaches, providing a single platform to power branch office services, including local applications, virtual desktop deployments, file and print services, DHCP and DNS services, WAN optimization controllers and security-focused virtual appliances.

Features and benefits include:

Easy-to-deploy converged infrastructure in a single 2U appliance to run virtual workloads common in mid-sized corporations, enterprise branch offices and retail stores
Flexibility to use existing network infrastructure (1 Gbps or 10 Gbps Ethernet) to reduce deployment costs and accelerate deployment
Pre-installed replication and back-up software automatically protects VM-specific data
Affordable pricing beginning at just $22,500 per node (server and storage included)

For a limited time, Nutanix is offering a pricing promotion on the NX-1000 series platform. Contact your local Nutanix sales representative or authorized partner for more details.

The First Elastic Storage Offering in Converged Infrastructure – the NX-6000 Series

Although many converged infrastructure solutions enable a simpler, building block-based approach to the enterprise datacenter, they often lack the ability to ideally match infrastructure capabilities with the demands of specific enterprise applications or services.

The Nutanix NX-6000 Virtual Computing Platform is the first converged datacenter platform to independently scale storage resources in a single converged infrastructure. Existing buyers of converged infrastructure have typically been forced to deploy products that only offer fixed, vendor-selected ratios of storage capacity and compute performance. Because most enterprises need to run multiple applications within the same environment, each with their own unique resource demands, IT is now in need of infrastructure that can be uniquely tailored to each environment. The Nutanix NX-6000 platform makes it simple and affordable for enterprises to design and scale their datacenters one appliance at a time with the ability to add just the right amount of storage and compute resources for any workload.

Features and benefits include:

Allows IT to choose, provision and expand storage capacity based on need, avoiding costly purchases of underutilized or unneeded resources
Allows new platforms to be seamlessly added to existing Nutanix clusters, enabling customers to mix and match platforms within a single environment for running multiple business applications simultaneously
Delivers 3X more raw storage capacity than earlier Nutanix platforms to support the most data intensive applications, such as SQL databases, Hadoop-driven data analytics or large-scale VDI rollouts. Doubles the amount of server-attached flash capacity for accommodating very large working sets, accelerating I/O intensive applications
Includes in-line and post-process data compression to deliver 35 TB to 70 TB of usable storage in a space-efficient 2U platform
Pricing beginning at $60,000 per node

Whiptail Accela pricing a half million bucks?

Original article by Chris Mellor at The Register

Enterprise flash array vendor Whiptail….

…By developing the WT-1100 for the entry-level market, Whiptail is positioning itself below the market position occupied by Violin Memory. That could, in turn, put other flash array vendors such as Nimbus Data under pricing pressure.

A 12TB ACCELA is listed at $588,000; that’s $49,000/TB. On that basis, a 4TB WT-1100 could cost $196,000: El Reg feels this would be far too high for a branch office/SME customer. For comparison, a 16TB 4-disk WD Sentinel 1U rackmount storage server is listed at $2,349 retail. But that only comes with a measly dual Atom processor combo running the show.

Whiptail says the WT-1100 starting price is under $20,000. For comparison, ten per cent of the theoretical equivalent 4TB ACCELA price would be $19,600.

Tintri pricing can reduce costs exploiting VMs

Original Article at SearchVirtualStorage

VM auto-alignment and a reporting tool that identifies latency from the guest operating system through the storage.

The Tintri VM storage appliances only support storage with VMware, although Tintri executives say they expect to add support for other hypervisors. The appliances do not support physical servers.

The Tintri VMstore T540 uses a mix of solid-state drives (SSDs) and SATA disk, the same as the VMstore T445, which began shipping in April. The T540 is a 3U dual-controller box with 13.5 TB of usable disk capacity (26.5 TB total ) and 2.4 TB of multi-level cell (MLC) flash. Each box can handle more than 200 virtual machines, said Chris Bennett, Tintri’s vice president of marketing.

Tintri’s original T445 system is a 4U single-controller system with 8.5 TB of usable storage and 1.44 TB of flash. Bennett said the startup will continue to sell the T445 as an entry-level system. The VM storage appliances are NFS-attached today, but Bennett said an iSCSI version may follow. Tintri is also planning more mature storage management features such as replication on a VM basis for future releases.

VMstore nodes can be clustered as NFS shares through 10 Gigabit Ethernet (GbE).

Bennett said VMstore is designed to generate 99% of its I/O from flash. Tintri claims the system also uses inline deduplication for submillisecond latency.

What makes Tintri different from other SSD systems is its integration with VMware. VMstore communicates with the VMware vCenter Server API to determine which VMs are active on the array. Instead of using volumes, LUNs and RAID groups, VMstores map I/O requests directly to the virtual disk on which they occur. The tight VM integration lets VMstore monitor and control I/O performance for each virtual disk.

Tintri claims its system automatically aligns the storage layer to the guest file system, so administrators don’t have to manually realign them to avoid performance degradation over time. The VMstore management dashboard also identifies latency for each VM and virtual disk to help troubleshoot performance problems.

Pricing for the T540 starts at $90,000, including four 10 GbE ports. The T445 costs $64,000.

Ed Lee, Tintri’s architect, said most of the vendor’s early customers use VMstore for specific applications, such as performance-hungry databases.

“Maybe there’s an application they tried to virtualize and failed, so they try running those applications on us, and then they may migrate other apps,” he said.

Tintri’s challenge will be keeping any edge it has managing VMs as the large storage vendors work more closely with VMware Inc. to take advantage of VMware vStorage APIs for Array Integration (VAAI). At VMworld in August, VMware previewed next-generation VAAIs that enable administrators to provision storage without using LUNs, RAID groups and NAS mount points. EMC Corp., NetApp Inc., Dell Inc., IBM, Hewlett-Packard Co. and Hitachi Data Systems Corp. are working with VMware on these features. But no storage vendors have said they were working on features such as auto-alignment or I/O visibility from VM to storage.

Ray Lucchesi, Silverton Consulting president, said he hasn’t seen other vendors as tightly integrated with VMware as Tintri.

“Tintri is laser-focused on VMware, and tightly coupled to VMware APIs,” Lucchesi said. “I haven’t seen other vendors drill down to the virtual machine and produce the same statistics from the I/O level. I don’t know if other storage vendors are working on that level of integration with VMware. If they are, they’re not showing it yet.”

Compare SSD Flash Memory Vendors with Pricing

UPDATE: Pure Storage lawyers requested that we remove all pricing information (publicly available with a quick search). We complied.

This post highlights the most popular Solid State Disk/Flash vendors and provides a chart to help decipher their costs. This data has been aggregated from various sources so no claims are made as to its accuracy.

In some cases the manufacturers provide a link to “Self-Service Pricing” via EchoQuote™ so you can get up to date pricing information quickly, often in minuts (last column).

Top 10 Solid State/Flash Array Vendors in Alphabetical order:

Vendor	Category	Pricing
Astute Networks	Flash Memory Arrays	Not Available
Fusion-io Pricing	Solid-State PCI Express Cards (Nexsan acquisition may put it on path to full appliance gear)	Not Available Range $2-$5/GB
Nimbus Data Pricing	Flash Memory Arrays	Not Available Per 2012 article – $150K for 10TB dual configuration
OCZ Pricing	Flash PCI Express Cards	Not Available Range $2-$5/GB
Skyera Pricing	Flash Memory Arrays	Not Available
Texas Memory Systems Pricing	PCI Cards Flash Memory Arrays	Not Available
Virident Pricing	PCI Cards Flash PCI Express Cards	Flash Max II Starts at $6000
VIOLIN Systems Pricing	NVMe Flash Arrays	Velocity cards come in 1.37, 2.75, 5.5 and 11TB raw capacity versions at a list price cost of $6/GB for all of them except the entry-level 1.37TB card which lists at $3/GB.Flash Max II Get a Self-Service Quote at our Violin Systems Pricing page.
Whiptail Pricing	PCI Cards Flash Memory Arrays	From $50K to $250K for multi-terabyte arrays

Fusion-io Pricing at CES with ioscale

Original article at Anandtech

The Fusion-io ioScale comes in capacities from 400GB to up to 3.2TB (single half length PCIe slot) making it one of the highest density, commercially available drives. Compared to traditional 2.5″ SSDs, the ioScale provides significant space savings as you would need several 2.5″ SSDs to build a 3.2TB array. The ioScale doesn’t need RAID for parity as there is built-in redundancy, which is similar to SandForce’s RAISE (some of the NAND die is reserved for parity data, so you can rebuild the data even if one or more NAND dies fail).

The ioScale is all MLC NAND based, although Fusion-io couldn’t specify the process node or manufacturer because they source their NAND from multiple manufacturers (makes sense given the volume required by Fusion-io). Different grades of MLC are also used but Fusion-io is promising that all their SSDs will match with the specifications regardless of the underlying components.

The same applies to the controller: Fusion-io uses multiple controller vendors, so they couldn’t specify the exact controller used in the ioScale. One of the reasons is extremely short design intervals because the market and technology is evolving very quickly. Most of Fusion-io’s drives are sold to huge data companies or governments, who are obviously very deeply involved in the design of the drives and also do their own validation/testing, so it makes sense to provide a variety of slightly different drives. In the past I’ve seen at least Xilinx’ FPGAs used in Fusion-io’s products, so it’s quite likely that the company stuck with something similar for the ioScale.

What’s rather surprising is the fact that ioScale is a single-controller design, even at up to 3.2TB. Usually such high capacity drives use a RAID approach, where multiple controllers are put behind a RAID controller to make the drive appear as a single volume. There are benefits with that approach too, but using a single controller often results in lower latencies (no added overhead by the RAID controller), prices (less components needed) and it takes less space.

The ioScale has previously been available to clients buying in big volumes (think tens of thousands of units) but starting today it will be available in minimum order quantities of 100 units.

Pricing starts at $3.89 per GB, which puts the 450GB model at $1556. For Open Compute Platforms, Fusion-io is offering a 30% immediate discount, which puts the ioScale at just $2.72/GB. For comparison, a 400GB Intel SSD 910 currently retails at $2134, so the ioScale is rather competitive in price, which is one of Fusion-io’s main goals.Volume discounts obviously play a major role, so the quoted prices are just a starting point.

Avere NAS pricing

Avere’s FXT 3200 features 96 GB of RAM and 4.8 TB of SAS disk storage, six 1GbE ports and two copper 10GbE ports; with the FXT 3500 offering 144 GB of RAM and 9 TB of SAS disk storage. Avere’s FXT Flash-based 4200 offers 96 GB of RAM and 1.6 TB of SSD; while the FXT 4500 provides 144 GB of RAM and 3 TB of SSD.

Pricing and Availability

The FXT 3000 Series starts at $72,500. Pricing for the FXT 4000 Series starts at $99,500. Both products are available within 30 days.

Avere’s NAS optimization solutions feature a tiered file system that organizes data across RAM, SSD, SAS and SATA tiers to effectively provide a 5:1 reduction in disks, power and rack space. The new FXT 3000 and FXT 4000 series hardware platforms are designed for even greater scalability and efficiency, doubling the amount of appliances that can be clustered to 50 and providing as much as 7 TB of RAM and hundreds of terabytes of SAS or SSD capacity on a single cluster.

“With the newest series of FXT appliances, we have continued building upon the hallmarks of Avere innovation by providing customers with the ability to take application performance scaling to new heights,” said Ron Bianchini, Avere President and CEO. “When combined with the ability to understand storage network usage patterns like never before, our NAS optimization solutions give customers the resources to use the storage infrastructure for competitive advantage.”

When does renting SAN storage make sense?

Have you ever wished you could just borrow some equipment for a short-term project? Maybe you’re migrating to a new platform and just need some breathing room while you make the move.

Here are several situations where renting, not buying, may make sense:

Data Center Migration – Rentals keep a data center operational during a move with critical ‘swing’ equipment for your migration.

Software Testing, Proof-of-Concept, or Virtualization Planning – Rentals enable a full load test of new hardware or software, matching production environment.

Facing Peak Capacity Issues or Planning a Short-Term Project – Renting is a cost-effective option for seasonal or short-term business needs.

Creating a Disaster Recovery or Business Continuity Plan – In the event of a disaster or unplanned outage, rentals can keep your business running.

Managing Infrastructure During an Asset Acquisition Freeze – Renting is typically an expense on the balance sheet – not a capital outlay. As a result, it might be an easier case to make to your CFO.

There are many sources for refurbished gear; from ebay to the top disposition handling companies. For corporate projects, I would steer clear of “self-service” goods via ebay, etc. There are options like Avnet Remarketing Solutions (ask for AJ Harradine) that provide industrial strength gear at self-service prices.

I asked AJ to give me some 3-month EqualLogic rental examples and here’s what he came up with.

Model	Per Month (Estimated)
S6510E – 48TB	$4,875/month
PS6010XV – 9.6TB	$3,900/month
PS6510E – 96TB	$7,020/month

Keep in mind that inventory is in constant flux so contact AJ and get in the queue quickly. He’ll put you on their “watch list” for the gear you need.

Thanks for the info AJ!

Dell DR4000 vtl cost may be enticing

Dell has introduced the DR4000, its de-duplication appliance based on its Ocarina technology and upgraded the software for its enterprise-class Compellent storage line with 64-bit technology.

Pricing for the DR4000 starts at $11,750 for the 2.7 TB model.

Dell Compellent DR4000 Pricing There’s no way around it – we’re in the midst of a data explosion – an explosion many small businesses are struggling to keep up with, without ever-increasing budgets. By eliminating redundancies, organizations can maximize their storage capacity and see immediate results. However, such technology has previously been out of reach for growing businesses. We’re pleased to announce the wait is over – today we announced the new Dell DR4000 Storage Platform which combines the performance and reliability of disk-based backup with innovative deduplication and compression capabilities from Dell’s Ocarina Networks acquisition. Virtual tape library (VTL) pricing and cost are decreasing.

So, how does it work? Data deduplication inspects chunks of data. A fingerprint of that chunk is taken and looked up in the system’s data index. If the fingerprint is in the index then the chunk does not need to be stored again. Instead the object map is updated and a shortcut is put in place of the duplicate data.

By keeping data online for weeks or even months before moving it to archive storage, customers can more easily locate and restore important data, creating new efficiencies and reducing the total cost of ownership for their storage infrastructure. These capabilities eliminate multiple copies of the same data and enable customers to keep more data online longer and readily available in the event of a disaster or data loss event.

Here are the DR4000 highlights:

* Eliminate redundant copies of data by decreasing disk capacity requirements up to 15 times.
* Reduce dependence on tape backup
* Reduce bandwidth requirements for data transfer by up to 15 times
* Reduce backup storage costs to as low as $0.25/GB
* Reduce the footprint of backup delivering power and cooling savings in the datacenter

In addition to excellent data reduction capabilities, the DR4000 reduces storage costs over time through an all-inclusive software licensing model that allows customers to leverage all of the DR4000 current and future product capabilities without incurring additional licensing costs.

Data deduplication helps optimize storage and more intelligently manage growing data – with less. As Dell continues to evolve its Fluid Data architecture for storage, customers will be able to apply deduplication technology on data in primary storage, backup storage, cloud storage or data in flight for replication, LAN and WAN transfers. So, what are some real-life examples that create duplicate data in a network? Email blasts that include attachments, saving multiple versions of file or the same file in different place and server/desktop virtualization containing redundant images of the same operating system. These activities are becoming more and more common, increasing the importance of deduplication technology for organizations of all sizes.

Implementing deduplication into your backup strategy is a critical part of moving into a next generation data center. What plans do you have in store for deduplication? Is the DR4000 in your future?

StorServer Cost and Pricing for new Backup Appliances

Original article by Alex Woodie at itjungle.com

The BA601 starts at $9,898, which is the first sub-$10,000 offering by STORServer. Pricing for the BA701 starts at $14,499. In the enterprise space, the EBA802 starts at $18,999, the EBA1202 starts at $29,919, the EBA2202 starts at $53,919, and the EBA3202 starts at $110,180.

As backup volumes grow, so too must the servers that drive the backups. To that end, backup appliance vendor STORServer last week announced upgrades to three of its product lines that will bring bigger, beefier hardware to bear on customers’ backup workloads.

STORServer sells integrated appliances that include all the hardware and software needed to successfully back up one’s data. The Colorado Springs, Colorado, company’s offerings have a decidedly blue tint to them, in that it builds its appliances on IBM X64 servers and powers them with IBM’s Tivoli Storage Manager (TSM) software. It also includes a nice management GUI on top of TSM and streamlines the TSM implementation to create a backup combination that STORServer says is second to none in the industry, but this story is all about new hardware.

To that end, the company has enhanced its offerings across three product areas, including its entry-level Backup Appliance (BA) offerings, its Enterprise Backup Appliance (EBA) line, and its Instant Restore (IR) appliance.

STORServer has launched two new entry-level appliances, including the BA601 and the BA701, to complement the BA851 that it launched earlier this year. The BA601 ships with 1.5 TB of internal storage, which can be increased by 6 TB or 9 TB, and can handle backup environments that see up to 1 TB of changed data per day. The BA701 includes 4 TB of storage built in (which can be increased by 10TB or 15 TB) and can handle 2 TB of daily changes. By comparison, the BA851 came with up to 15 TB of SAS disk-based storage, and could handle 1.2 TB of daily changed data.

STORServer also bolstered its EBA line, which is based on the IBM System x M4 server line. The new EBA802 replaces the EBA801 and EBA851 models, and can handle up to 3 TB of changed data daily. The new EBA1202 replaces the old EBA1102 models, and can handle up to 5 TB of changed data daily. The EBA2202 replaces the EBA2102 and EBA2502 models, and is deal for backing up as much as 7 TB daily.

The new monster EBA3202 replaces the EBA3102 and EBA3501 models. It features two 16-core processors and a base storage duo that includes 2.8 TB of internal SSD storage, 2.7 TB of regular disk. This 5.5 TB pair provides very high backup performance, and can handle up to 10 TB worth of daily backups.

All of STORServer’s new BA and EBA appliances can be bolstered with additional disk shelves and tape outputs on the backside. All of them provide built-in de-duplication, and support replication to other appliances or to the STORServer cloud.

STORServer also announced the new IR501, the latest iteration of its Instant Restore appliance for backing up Windows and Linux servers in branch locations and remote offices. The IR501 features up to 11 TB of raw storage, which is effective for storing up to 3 TB of data. Total storage capacity can be increased to 40 TB with the optional expansion shelf, or data can be replicated to a second IR appliance, or even a BA or EBA appliance.

STORServer also included pricing with its latest announcement, which shows the company is growing more confident in its solutions. (The fact that STORServer did so well in a recent appliance roundup by storage industry analyst DCIG also didn’t hurt the company’s confidence.)