Starboard Storage Brings True Hybrid Storage to SMEs

Starboard Storage Systems, Inc., in hybrid storage for modern application workloads, announced the Storage AC45 expanding the Storage AC Series.

The Storage AC Series brings solid state performance and storage capabilities within the reach of SMEs IT professionals managing modern application workloads.

Starboard Storage’s Mixed Application Storage Tiering (MAST) authorizes true hybrid storage systems and virtualizes SSD resources for performance acceleration. It delivers a single pool of HDD resources and support multiple protocols including CIFS, NFS, FC and iSCSI. This combination enables consolidated applications to take advantage of performance as a utility, capacity on demand, simplicity and control. All these features work together to provide compelling TCO.

"Starboard’s MAST architecture is the right architecture for the next decade," said Victor Walker, CEO of Starboard Storage Systems. "The AC Series takes the guess work out of performance by providing simple, efficient data consolidation onto a single high-performance storage system that handles the dynamic requirements of unpredictable application workloads."

"With the AC Series, Starboard Storage Systems is addressing critical SME storage needs by reducing the complexity of managing storage while introducing an advanced storage architecture," said Steve Duplessie, founder and senior analyst of Enterprise Strategy Group. "Administrative complexity is cut while delivering higher quality of service. This should be a very appealing solution."

The new AC45 Storage System brings the performance of solid state storage to more customers.

Starting at $39,995 MSRP, the AC45 comes standard with the SSD Accelerator Tier, 12TB of storage capacity and built-in 1GbE networking and is for current iSCSI storage customers looking for a boost for their applications.

Customers can increase both capacity and performance by adding to their Dynamic Storage Pool or SSD Accelerator Tier on the fly. The AC45 supports SAN and NAS and customers can upgrade networking to 10GbE or 8Gb FC. Maximum expansion is 78TB.

The new models of the AC72 feature up to 33% more capacity and 100% more read and write SSD cache standard than previous models increasing performance and lowering the cost per GB. The AC72 is the consolidation platform for SMEs looking to lower their storage footprint and increase performance for their critical applications. It supports both SAN and NAS and offers an optional combination of 1Gb, and 10Gb Ethernet and 8Gb FC. Depending on the AC72 model, capacity can be expanded to over half a Petabyte making it ideal for fixed content applications. This results in tremendous saving in energy and space consumption for customers.

Starboard Storage Hybrid Architecture:
The AC45 and AC72 are designed to provide a balance of performance of SSDs with the capacity of SAS drives. The SSD Accelerator Tier virtualizes solid state resources and provides performance as a utility to multiple applications by utilizing intelligent caching and data movement. The SSD Accelerator Tier is optimized to boost performance for both reads and writes and handles the dynamic requirements of unpredictable application workloads delivering performance on demand.

Starboard Storage’s hybrid storage capacity is tuned for each workload. Administrative complexity is cut by eliminating the concept of RAID groups. With the AC Series there is no complex RAID group setup or management, no meta-LUN management, no protocol layering, no lengthy re-builds or re-striping and no need for system re-boots and manual data layouts.

The AC Series’ capacity can be expanded with automatic load balancing across new drives as they are added. Drive speeds and capacities can be mixed and matched within AC Series. The AC45 only supports 7200rpm NL-SAS Drives. The AC72 supports both 7200rpm NL-SAS and 15K SAS. Performance and capacity are expanded as drive shelves and drives are added. The AC72 provides up to half a PB of storage. Both AC Series platforms feature an all-inclusive licensing model that includes thin provisioning, replication, snapshots, clones and space reclamation.

Starboard Storage Systems distributes its products through a network of VZAR partners that share the goal of bringing hybrid storage solutions to market and into SME companies.

The AC72 and AC45 Systems are available.