Top 10 Storage and Networking Trends for 2014
When the costs of flash storage versus magnetic storage are fully loaded, it may very well be that flash storage at $2 per GB is going to trump magnetic storage when it comes to primary storage.
Kaminario today launched version five of its K2 all-flash array, which Kaminario CEO Dani Golan says provides access to solid-state drives (SSDs) via an industry-standard x86 processor platform that can scale up to 90TB in a 4u rack or 360TB in a 14u rack, at a cost of $2 per GB versus a comparable magnetic storage system which, when the amount of usable capacity is considered, would actually cost north of $5 per GB.
Couple those costs with the fact that flash memory provides applications with much more consistent levels of performance and Golan contends that it’s now only a matter of time before flash memory dominates all aspects of primary storage.
To distinguish itself from flash storage rivals, Golan says that Kaminario is also bundling all the software, including inline data deduplication, required to efficiently run and manage K2 Flash arrays with a system that is now designed to scale out and up as I/O requirements change.
In addition, Kaminario has developed cloud-based analytics and events-based alerting capabilities, called HealthShield, that help organizations avoid unexpected downtime, while at the same time providing automated capacity management tools. Also included are a set of RESTful APIs that make it simpler to manage K2 systems via a third-party management system.
Even before reaching price points that now rival magnetic storage, the total cost of flash storage in the enterprise made flash storage the default option for primary storage when it came to new mission-critical applications. Now Golan is making the case that the time has come to consider flash storage for almost all applications, period, if for no other reason than that being able to provide consistent levels of I/O performance means the headaches associated with guaranteeing application performance levels across the enterprise are about to finally disappear once and for all.
