Astute With 46TB of SSD Capacity in 2U

Astute Networks, Inc. announced the expansion of the ViSX family of Performance Storage Appliances with enterprise data protection and a new MLC flash offering that will be attractive to the SME and SMB markets.

The new MLC flash-based ViSX has been designed to offer the industry’s lowest cost-per-GB and highest IO/s per dollar for enterprise flash storage appliances at a solution price that is comparable to disk-based storage systems. Astute also announced ViSX Replicator, a flash-optimized data availability solution that supports both synchronous and asynchronous replication.

The company breaks application performance barriers by resolving critical I/O bottlenecks with the ViSX flash-based Performance Storage Appliances for physical and virtual environments. Based on its 10GbE DataPump Engine and Networked Flash architecture, it gives IT managers a storage I/O acceleration appliance that boosts application and VDI performance up to 10X in a matter of minutes. Companies improve user productivity, customer satisfaction and revenue generation while eliminating the over-provisioning of storage, servers, and network resources. ViSX co-exists with installed storage and delivers 100% flash performance in a non-disruptive, simple to deploy solution, at prices comparable to disk-based systems.

According to IDC, the enterprise all-Solid State Storage (SSS) array market is forecasted to grow to $1.2 billion in revenue by 2015. Astute is addressing this market and is announcing its new Astute ViSX Performance Storage Appliance that now offers customers a choice of either lower cost MLC flash or higher write endurance eMLC flash. This enables customers the opportunity to balance cost per GB, cost per IO/s, and overall endurance to meet their business and IT objectives. When combined with the ViSX Performance Dedupe facility, a ViSX appliance can be acquired for less than $2 per GB. The new version of ViSX is now expandable to 45.6TB of raw storage capacity within a 2U enclosure. When deployed with ViSX Performance Dedupe, the effective capacity can exceed over 250TB. New flash storage modules are available in 400GB, 800GB and 1.9TB capacities which can be mixed and matched within the same 2U appliance.

These units are suited for cost-conscience SME and SMB data centers that want to experience the performance benefits of flash without the disruption factor associated with flash-based PCIe cards and complete SAN replacements.

Astute now supports synchronous and asynchronous replication to increase data availability for mission-critical applications. ViSX Replicator software can be deployed in a local or remote redundant configuration for increased overall data availability. It helps ensure BC by providing local and distance replication while maintaining application and data integrity. It improves business resilience by enabling DR testing with online data and minimizes operational disruption of planned maintenance or outage events.

"When it comes to performance sensitive applications, all flash storage that is priced comparable to disk-based storage is the ‘holy grail’ solution that customers of every size are seeking," said Arun Taneja, founding and consulting analyst, Taneja Group. "As we now know this is easier said than done, especially if one expects performance to stay constant under all conditions. Astute appears to be the only storage company that offers a compelling and affordable all flash storage solution that is specifically designed for the mid-sized and small business markets."

Annandale, Va.-based health care provider, Professional Healthcare Resources, Inc. (PHR) is dedicated to helping thousands of Maryland, Virginia, and DC patients improve the quality of their lives. Facing high data growth and increasing application performance demands, it began searching for a new scalable, but cost-effective storage solution to augment its existing HDD based storage systems. That’s when it discovered the ViSX solution.

"The difference in performance between our existing storage array and the ViSX appliance was like night and day," said Hussein Sh-Ibrahim, IT director for PHR. "The ViSX deployment was very easy and the entire solid state solution was surprisingly affordable. Productivity and efficiency is up, and our employees can now quickly access patient data like never before. Backups that used to take four to five hours now complete in less than an hour. If you want fast performance quickly, get ViSX."

New features include:

• Expanded capacity to 45.6TB in a 2U enclosure
• Choices of MLC or eMLC NAND flash modules
• Capacity choices of 400GB, 800GB, and 1.9TB per SSD modules
• ViSX Replicator asynchronous and synchronous replication software

ViSX offers low $ per IO/s and cost per GB of iSCSI-based flash solution due to its patented DataPump Engine, which offloads TCP and iSCSI network processing. The DataPump Engine gives ViSX the 3-5X performance advantage over all of its flash and hybrid disk/flash competitors that offer iSCSI-based storage solutions.

"Mid-sized IT organizations tell us that they want a robust all-flash storage solution that is non-disruptive to their existing infrastructure and delivers a compelling combination of high capacity, high data availability, and random IO/s performance at a truly affordable price," said Len Rosenthal, SVP marketing, Astute. "Our ViSX performance storage appliances break the price-per-capacity barrier of solid state flash and are the obvious choice for iSCSI SAN users that want to exploit the tremendous performance and cost of ownership benefits of solid state storage."

Astute offers a no-performance-impact inline primary deduplication capability, called ViSX Performance Dedupe. that enables customers to drive down the amount of storage needed by 3-10X on average and also get the performance, floor space, power and cooling benefits of 100% solid state with the prices comparable to HDD based systems. As the DataPump Engine offloads the storage and network protocol processing from the main storage processors, the processors and memory are now freed up to focus on deduplication processing. Alternative solutions experience significant performance degradation when deduplication is enabled.

The new ViSX family of Performance Storage Appliances are orderable with pricing that starts at $32,000 MSRP.