Argo Technologie Launching Ethernet Storage Fabric for Petascale Storage Solutions

Founded in 2015 in Lausanne, Switzerland, Argo Technologie SA has launched a range of appliances utilising its Ethernet Storage Fabric to deliver scale-out storage solutions aimed at petascale environments.

Perseus NAS appliance
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Launched products include Perseus, a NAS appliance based on the ZFS with a flexible choice of SSD and cache options. The Argus scale-out Ethernet block storage shelf communicates with the Perseus NAS appliance across the speed Ethernet Storage Fabric and offers a flexible choice of up to 36, 72 or 90 slots for SSD or NL-SAS drives with 10 or 40GbE connectivity. The high density design allows a 5.7PB of storage including switches to be deployed in one rack (36U) while consuming just 9.5Kw.

Argus Ethernet block storage shelves
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The Ethernet Storage Fabric (AESF) at the heart of each appliance is capable of scaling performance and capacity to support multiple petabyte storage pools through its parallel storage architecture. Originally based on ATA over Ethernet protocol, AESF has been further developed to deliver a set of enhanced features designed to meet the needs of petascale use cases while benefiting from enhanced performance with low latency. The use of the industry standard ZFS file system along with deep protocols support including NFS, CIFS and optionally iSCSI provides integration for both file and block based applications.

Perseus NAS appliance specs
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To ensure highest levels of resiliency, firm’s appliances use a Redundant Array of Independent Nodes (RAIN) architecture that can tolerate the unlikely event of multiple drive and even entire storage shelf failures and still maintain data integrity.

Argus Ethernet block storage shelves specs
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The Swiss headquartered company was founded by Oleg Zelentsov, formerly at Navica Data, a serial entrepreneur and owner of a number of successful European technology businesses.

“Argo Technologie is built from day one to be a solid and stable business that by avoiding the Silicon Valley VC route has instead built a company that from private funding has reached modest profitability in just 12 months,” explains Zelentsov. “In relative stealth mode, we have responded to RFPs, won deals and implemented major systems that we are now in the process of creating references to highlight the suitability of our technology for petascale applications within the areas of security and video surveillance, media and entertainment, healthcare and larger service providers.“

One such customer is the Ministry of Transport in Russia that has deployed the company’s appliances to deliver 16 PB of storage for its Plato project to create a road toll charging system spanning 52,000km of roadways.

The Argo executive team includes developers and managers that have previously held senior roles at EqualLogic, Rackable Systems and Coraid.

As Denis Nuja, CTO, Argo, explains: “Our Argo Ethernet Storage Fabric is designed from the ground up to solve the needs of large scale storage deployments that require the capacity, performance and the simplicity that are necessary to achieve the highest levels of reliability. The design of the AESF allows us to easily add new technologies such as NVMe and Ethernet connected HDD to the mix to gain instant performance, latency and capacity improvements.“

The firm has setup a full scale technical evaluation lab in Zürich, Switzerland which includes a Petabyte cluster utilising Perseus and Argus appliances for customer solution and use case testing. “By developing our own internal fabric along with commodity hardware from our partners, we are able to deliver a storage architecture that is incredibly cost effective and support it with a dedicated international team from our HQs in Switzerland,” adds Nuja.

The company is currently signing up key channel partners in Europe and working closely with its existing customers to extend its technology with enhanced functionality.

“We have learnt from our time within the storage industry that great technology is not enough,” says Stephen Hannsales, director, Argo. “In today’s storage market customers’ needs change rapidly which is why we have created Argo Technologie with a highly defined focus on only larger customers. We are privately held and profitable with zero financial investment from VC companies with an aim to serve a specific core customer set in a more effective and consistent manner than the typical start-up approach that focuses on growth ahead of longer term viability.“

The firm currently has customers in four European countries and is in the final stages of several major projects each in excess of 8PB. Full testimonials are currently underway and will be made available later in the year.