Start-Up’s Profile: Starboard Storage Systems
With HDD/SSD system able to optimize each application
This is a Press Release edited by StorageNewsletter.com on February 15, 2012 at 3:04 pmStarboard Storage Systems, Inc., in Application-Crafted Storage for mixed workloads, announced the AC72 Storage System.
It is designed to simplify managing mixed workload environments that include unstructured, virtualized, and structured data while delivering twice the performance at half the cost of legacy SAN and NAS systems.
Traditional storage systems are not designed to support mixed workloads efficiently within a single scalable storage system, forcing SME customers to maintain separate silos of DAS, NAS and SAN storage and make costly forklift upgrades from one storage array to another. By providing consolidation of unstructured, virtualized, and structured data onto a single scalable storage system, Starboard has delivered a storage system that simplifies managing mixed application workloads while changing the price/performance equation for mid-tier IT environments.
Starboard Storage has more than 30 customers managing more than 750 terabytes of capacity with the AC72 Storage System.
"We were able to consolidate all workloads under the Starboard Storage solution to improve storage utilization and management," said Shane Brown, CEO of DigeTekS, LLC. "As a result, we saw exceptional I/O performance, 20 times faster than the previous iSCSI solution we were using. Even during volume production and peak load periods we were able to maintain high performance and throughput across our virtual environment."
In a comparative test run by Evaluator Group, the AC72 was benchmarked against a mid-range unified storage system. The January 2012 study revealed that the AC72 achieved 100 percent better performance in the Iometer test and 42 percent more transactions per second in the JetStress performance test. Both systems were comparably configured with SDDs and HDDs. The AC72 is less than half the cost of the competing system.
"Starboard Storage Systems has addressed pressing storage needs for the mid-tier market by introducing an advanced systems architecture while reducing the complexity of storage management," said Randy Kerns, senior strategist of the Evaluator Group. "In a mixed workload environment, Starboard Storage has been shown to deliver twice the performance at half the cost of existing SAN and NAS systems."
AC72 Advantage
The AC72 provides consolidation onto a single storage system, optimizing the configuration for each application by creating a Dynamic Storage Pool with virtual volumes tuned for each workload.
It also introduces the SSD Accelerator Tier, a second-generation tiering architecture that lowers operational overhead and provides predictable performance when and where it’s needed. It boosts performance for both reads and writes, providing tuned storage that maintains consistently high performance for mixed workloads.
Combining dynamic storage pooling and automated SSD acceleration for each application workload offers SMBs simplicity in managing mixed workload environments.
In addition, Starboard Storage Apps simplify provisioning of volumes across multiple storage protocols including CIFS, NFS, iSCSI and FC. Since the AC72 was specially designed to manage mixed workloads, IT administrators can dramatically reduce their time and costs in managing storage.
With the AC72, all-inclusive software license includes thin provisioning, mirroring, asynchronous replication and snapshots. The AC72 scales up to 474TBs with a redundant architecture.
Distribution and Availability
Starboard Storage Systems distributes its products through a network of VAR partners that share the goal of bringing Application-Crafted Storage solutions to market and into SMBs.
The AC72 System is available. It is priced at $59,995 MSRP for an all-inclusive storage system including 24TB storage, an SSD Accelerator Tier with three SSD drives, thin provisioning, asynchronous replication and snapshots. Customers can expand the system by adding AC72 Storage System Expansion Shelves.
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Company
Starboard Storage Systems, Inc.
Headquarters
Broomfield, CO
Founded in
February 13, 2012
Origin of the company
It's relatively complicated. Starboard is born following the closing of RELDATA, a start-up launched in 2005 and involved in unified block and file storage solutions over iSCSI, that got $4 million in Series B funding in 2011 and based in Parsippany, NJ. The web site www.reldata.com has been redirected to starboardstorage.com. On its side, RELDATA was created following the merger between RELDATA Europe GmbH in Stuttgart, Germany, and Reliable Data Technology, Inc. born in 1996, and whose founder and CEO was Kirill Malkin, then CTO of RELDATA now CTO of Starboard. Several executives of the new company come from RELDATA including CEO, CTO, VP engineering, and director of sales.
Financial funding
NA
Main executives
- Victor Walker, CEO, was COO and co-founder at ClusterStor (2009-2010), a storage company acquired by Xyratex in 2010. Prior to that, he served as VP of Sun Microsystems' Storage Systems Product Group (2005-2009), president and CEO of CreekPath Systems (2002-2004) sold to Opsware in 2006, president and CEO of Tantia Technologies (2000-2002), launched by BETA Systems Software AG, VP and GM storage group, Groupe Bull (1998-1999), and VP operations multi-platform Group, STK (1983-1998).
- Karl Chen, CMO, was executive director of the RDX Storage Alliance and SVP sales and marketing for IceWEB. He was involved in building and selling two start-ups including LeftHand Networks and NuView ManageX, acquired by HP OpenView. He was also was VP marketing at BMC Software and held executive roles at HP, Dell, and Compaq.
- Kirill Malkin, CTO, was founder and CEO of Reliable Data Technology and previously, held development roles at Cantor Fitzgerald and Chase Manhattan Bank.
- Paul Stukus, CFO, built three VC-backed start-ups including Digene, which he took through an IPO (now Qiagen), and Cyveillance acquired by QinetiQ N.A.
- Lee Johns, VP product marketing, was previously director of storage product marketing at HP where he was responsible for bringing to market the portfolio of HP storage products including HP 3PAR, LeftHand, EVA, MSA, IBRIX and StoreOnce deduplication.
- John Potochnik, VP engineering operations, was co-founder and director of software development at Blue Spruce Networks sold to Pirus Networks in 2001 and subsequently acquired by Sun. He also brings experience from companies including LSI Logic, Symbios Logic, AT&T, and NCR.
- Bill Chambers, chairman, was founder, president and CEO at LeftHand Networks sold to HP in 2008 for $360 million to become VP HP StorageWorks, the new LeftHand product line of HP.
- Alec Rauschenbusch and Andreas Rüter, worked at Grazia Equity GmbH, investor in RELDATA
- John McArthur, President, Walden Technology Partners, was group VP and GM at IDC
- Dennis Johnson was EVP sales and marketing at Compellent and EVP sales for Xiotech.
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Technology
For its AC72 - the name of an America's Cup catamaran - storage system, Starboard uses the term "Application-Crafted" fo its MAST (Mixed-workload, Application-crafted Storage Tiering) architecture, meaning the configuration is optimized automatically for each application to avoid for the user to buy separate storage silos by application.
It is based on two technologies:
- A Dynamic Storage Pool with volumes optimized for each application workload reduces administrative complexity, intelligently understanding the I/O characteristics of each application workload
- A built-in SSD Accelerator Tier optimizes the performance per workload to deliver faster performance than traditional SAN/NAS.
Based on Xeon 5600 processors (one or two per nodes), the 3U AC72, built by sub-contractor manufacturer Supermicro, includes 24GB or 48GB DRAM, SAS drives only, either twelve 15,000rmp 600GB or twelve near-line 7,200rpm 2TB HDDs. The SSD Accelerator Tier includes three Stec or Toshiba SSDs, two 100GB units for mirrored write cache, and one 200GB device for spillover read cache. There are redundant controllers, hot swap power supplies and fans.
Each node is equipped with: two PCIe ×4 and one PCIe ×8 cards; dual 1GbE ports for management; dual 10GbE interconnect (internal); and IPMI with KVM over LAN support. There ara also 1GbE and 10GbE as well as 8Gb FC expansion cards.
It can be expanded with 16-bay 3U and 45-bay 4U shelves through 6Gb SAS up to 474TB.
RAID is not used but a stripping technology.
The storage pool is thin provisioned with simplify provisioning of volumes across storage protocols including CIFS, NFS, iSCSI and FC.
Released date
February 13, 2012
Price range
The AC72 is priced at $59,995 including 24TB storage, an SSD Accelerator Tier with three SSD drives, and software licences for thin provisioning, mirroring, asynchronous replication and snapshots.
Roadmap
Cache compression for SSDs
Distribution
Promark Technology, 30 VARs
Number of customers
35, with capacities from 24TB to 700TB
Target market
SMEs
Competitors
EMC, NetApp, HP, Dell, and eventually start-ups like NexGen Storage, Nimble Storage, Nutanix, Tegile, Tintri, etc.
Long term strategy
First to sell in North America, then outside from 2013. Looking at new investors. Trying an IPO rather than finding a buyer in the future.
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