Start-Up GreenBytes Launches De-Dupe Appliances

GreenBytes, Inc. unveiled the company’s new GB-X Series deduplication storage appliances that incorporate energy-efficient technologies in an easy-to-use, cost-effective package, designed to bring the benefits of data deduplication to the broader storage market. GreenBytes’ new GB-2000/GB-4000 appliances, the first GB-X Series storage appliances available in the line, provide unparalleled performance, scalability and ease-of-use in a high-value product featuring the lowest TCO and highest ROI.

Through its GreenBytes File System (GBFS), GreenBytes has developed the first general-purpose storage appliances to incorporate native inline deduplication into an enterprise-scale file system. Unlike other deduplication technologies that are primarily used only for backup operations, GreenBytes has created storage appliances that permit real-time, on-the-fly deduplication of file blocks as they are stored, expanding the scope of applications into primary storage, as well as backup.

"In what sometimes seems like the golden age of de-dupe, it is refreshing to see innovators like GreenBytes bring a fresh take to the technology, and prove that it is possible to yet again out-do many of the previous attempts," said Jeff Boles, senior analyst and director, validation services, The Taneja Group. "Specifically, GreenBytes looks poised to deliver blistering and scalable performance in an impressively space and energy-efficient footprint that should make more than a few vendors shake in their boots."

Performance
GB-X Series products include multiple unique, patent-pending technologies and offer NAS and SAN functionality with SSD-enabled performance. GB-X storage appliances dramatically boost storage and deduplication performance while maintaining superlative ingest rates as the data store scales. GreenBytes’ GB-2000 with optional 10 Gigabit Ethernet boasts an ingest rate of 650 MB/s and the GB-4000 with standard 10 GbE has an ingest rate of 950 MB/s – resulting in performance ratios of about three times that of competing deduplication appliances.

Scalability
GreenBytes’ GB-X Series appliances represent the most advanced open architecture available in the industry, combining highly innovative software technology with a world-class server platform. Featuring Intel Xeon 5520 processors and utilizing the latest 2.5-inch enterprise class disks, GB-X Series appliances are also easily and efficiently scalable. The GB-2000 starts from an entry point of 12 TB that can be scaled up to 60 TB, while the GB-4000 appliance offers a 24 TB base that expands to 216 TB.

Energy Efficiency
GB-X Series appliances offer unparalleled power efficiency to address the energy crisis facing today’s IT operations, featuring GreenBytes’ intelligent power management capabilities that automatically put a subset of drives into a lower power state and keep only the necessary drives active. A fully-populated 216 TB GB-4000 appliance has a power consumption rate of just 7 watts/TB under a heavy load power-managed – less than a third of the power capacity in comparison to one of the industry’s leading storage servers configured for 48 TB (average consumption of 22 watts/TB.) Additionally, the GB-2000 appliance draws about the same power required for two light bulbs – less than 150 watts.

Reliability
GB-2000/GB-4000 storage appliances also provide outstanding reliability and support redundancies at all levels — protecting data even in the event of two concurrent disk failures – and can transparently recover from any single point of failure and allow for the online replacement of failed components. Furthermore, GreenBytes’ enhanced hashing algorithms, in combination with proactive disk scrubbing, result in a higher level of data integrity.

Easy-to-Use Interface
In terms of the GB-X Series’ superior ease-of-use, GreenBytes has created the only storage appliance that is completely administrated from Microsoft Management Console (MMC) using custom MMC plug-ins. The intuitive administration tool suite accommodates the entire set of data management tasks with a single MMC to enable simple administration of even the most complex data storage scenarios. Unlimited snapshots with integrated Microsoft shadow copy support, replication, and easy cross-platform (CIFS/NFS) file-sharing tasks are easily administered with the tool.

In addition to its high performance NAS capabilities, GreenBytes’ GB-2000/GB-4000 is also the world’s only inline deduplicating iSCSI storage technology. GreenBytes appliances can support iSCSI volumes as well as thousands of users, with the associated storage being provisioned from within a single, centrally managed pool. Additionally, GB-2000/GB-4000 storage appliances do not require additional licenses for desired functionality. All software features are ‘bundled in’ at no additional cost, removing the frustrating ‘ding-ware’ a la carte pricing that is common in the storage industry.

"GreenBytes undertook an intensive R&D effort to deliver high-performance storage appliances that are also easy-to-use and cost effective, so that any company from a Fortune 500 to a SMB could enjoy the benefits of data deduplication technology," said Bob Petrocelli, chief executive officer of GreenBytes. "We also wanted our customers to be able to use the products for years to come, so we created the GB-X Series to be easily and efficiently scalable in order to grow with their data storage needs, and added future-proofing elements such as 10 Gigabit Ethernet as a standard feature on our GB-4000 Series product."

GreenBytes provides a variety of technical support services including installation and set-up, user configuration assistance, hardware and software support and a guaranteed warranty – all backed by GreenBytes’ 7x24x365 customer service and support.