At the Flash Memory Summit 2017 conference this week, Kaminario announced that it will make available an NMVe-based Flash storage system in the first quarter of 2018.
Josh Epstein, chief marketing officer for Kaminario, says the company expects the Kaminario K2.N array will be available at a 50 percent premium over current SAS-based storage systems. Given those initial price points, Epstein says it may be a while before NVMe overtakes SAS-based Flash storage.
“There’s not a lot of consensus on pricing,” says Epstein. “But it could be anywhere from 12 to 24 months before NVMe pricing crosses over SAS pricing.”
Because of the lower latency afforded by NVMe, Kaminario also announced this week Kaminario Flex, orchestration software it will deliver in the second half of 2018 through which IT organizations will be able to treat Kaminario K2.N arrays as if they are one logical virtual resource.
Epstein says Kaminario will not only be connecting arrays to NVMe systems, it is incorporating NVMe over Ethernet within its controllers and storage nodes to enable IT organizations to better maximize utilization and overall throughput via Kaminario Flex. In general, Kaminario expects the Kaminario K2.N family of arrays to be twice as fast as its existing array while increasing density by a factor of four. The capability will extend Kaminario’s ability to optionally allow IT organizations to either scale up or scale out storage as they see fit, says Epstein.
In addition, Epstein says Kaminario will expose an open Kaminario Flex application programming interface (API) through its arrays that can either be incorporated in third-party software-defined data centers (SDDCs) or accessed directly by an application developer working in an integrated DevOps environment.
It’s logical to assume that web-scale companies will make the transition to NVMe-based systems first. But NVMe-based systems will also play a critical role in helping IT organizations accelerate the transition to private clouds hosted in local data centers.
