DDN With Lower Entry Storage Appliances

DataDirect Networks, Inc. (DDN) announced the availability of the SFA10K-M and SFA10K-ME big data appliances, which will enable organizations to start small and grow their big data infrastructure incrementally while harnessing the performance of DDN’s SFA technology.

"One of the key attributes of today’s big data is the lack of predictability of data growth across customer environments," said Alex Bouzari, CEO of DDN. "Today’s announcement of our SFA10K-M and SFA10K-ME platforms is an important step in furthering the democratization of big data and enabling our customers to resolve big data unpredictability by starting small and growing incrementally into massively scalable big data technology."

Additions to SFA10K family include:

• SFA10K-ME: Featuring DDN’s In-Storage Processing technology, it is built with high-speed server virtualization technology to co-locate big data applications closest to data and eliminate the need for storage processing and networking. Configurations, featuring IB or Ethernet connection, can be optionally configured to support DDN’s GridScaler and ExaScaler parallel file system software to scale file system performance beyond 1TB/s and volume capacity beyond 10 petabytes.
• SFA10K-M: As a high-speed block storage appliance featuring IB or FC connection, it can be configured to deliver up to 10GB/s in 20Uup to 720TB of capacity and can be scaled-out with DDN’s file storage offerings as a modular big data building block.

The two systems are available both through the company’s sales force and global partner network. With a reduced configuration, the system features up to 40% lower entry pricing 57% less form form-factor than previous SFA10K configurations. To support the product introduction, DDN is announcing a 3 month introductory price for the SFA10K-M which starts at $100,000 USD.

Promotion Details
For a three-month promotional period between April 1, 2012 and June 30, 2012, DDN will offer 10K-M pricing to end-users starting at $100,000. The promotional $100,000 entry-level configuration consists of: 1 x SFA10K-M Storage Array Bundle w/ 8 x IB ports, 1 x 60-slot 4U SS7000 enclosure, 6Gb cables, 16GB of Mirrored Cache, Battery, SFPs and SFA OS Licenses for 4 Raid Processors including SATAssure, RAID levels 1, 5 and 6. Installation, annual support and ExaScaler or GridScaler add-on software is sold separately.

"The ‘Big’ in ‘big data’ is a relative term, like the ‘High’ in ‘High Performance Computing.’ Big data is about the growth in data across multiple industries, causing organizations to address high-performance data management issues they haven’t had to cope with before," said Addison Snell, CEO of Intersect360 Research. "Not every big data problem is in petabytes. That’s why it makes sense for DDN to extend its high-performance storage lines into the midrange, to lower the entry point for big data management."