Advanced Computing in the Age of AI | Thursday, March 28, 2024

Flash Pricing Drops Below $1 Per GB with New Kaminario Array 

Flash storage prices continue to fall, something advocates expect will encourage more enterprises to replace more hard disk drives (HDDs) and create all-flash datacenters.

With today's announcement of K2 Perpetual Array v5.5, storage vendor Kaminario says it now delivers usable flash storage for less than $1 per gigabyte. The news comes only a month after Dell is slated to begin shipping the Dell Storage SC4020, which can cost as little as $1.66 per gigabyte, Travis Vigil, executive director of Dell Storage, told EnterpriseTech in July.

Cost had been the single biggest stumbling block to flash adoption in the data center, said Eric Burgener, research director, storage systems at IDC, at the time of Dell's announcement. With Kaminario's news today of sub-$1 per gigabyte flash, this storage option becomes more attractive and viable for more use cases across the datacenter – including disaster recovery, said Dani Golan, founder and CEO of Kaminario, in an interview.

Kaminario expects its new array also addresses the other main challenge facing enterprise storage professionals: Scale. Coping with the steady surge of unstructured data in all its formats makes storage planning part science, part magic, so storage systems must be easily adaptable to meet changing corporate demands. To accomplish this, today Kaminario said it is deploying 3D NAND TLC SSDs in its array; delivering native array replication, and simplifying how enterprises buy and scale storage.

Dani Golan, Kaminario (Source: LinkedIn)

Dani Golan, Kaminario (Source: LinkedIn)

"When we talk about under $1 per gigabyte, this is a sustainable competitive differentiation," said Golan. "[Our product] … can scale out and scale up, allowing customers to buy exactly what they need and never over-provision on performance or capacity."

The vendor's 3D NAND TLC high-capacity solid-state drives have a seven-year "endurance" warranty and are available as 360 terabyte in a K block and 2-plus petabytes in a K2 AFA.

"Our utilization is at 87.5 percent. That's our capacity utilization. When you look at density of both performance density and capacity density, we put 360 terabyte usable in a K block, that will equate to over 2 petabytes in a rack, and that deployment will have more than 25 gigabytes per second and more than 2 million iOPs," Golan said, noting that the largest deployment today is at 6 petabytes.

Native array-based replication coupled with low pricing allows organizations to now use flash for both production and disaster recovery, he said. This integrated solution, which is VMware SRM- and application-aware, simplifies operations and management, speeds recovery, and improves post-disaster SLAs, Golan said. It delivers sub-minute recovery point objective (RPO) and sub-second recovery time objectives (RTO), according to the vendor.

Pricing and transparency led to the creation of Kaminario's perpetual array program, he said. Enterprises can mix and match controllers and SSDs, then decommission when needed, the company said.

"We see ourselves as a true general storage vendor for the enterprise market. We wanted to eliminate forklift upgrades," said Golan. "We're allowing, under the same array – whether they need to scale for more performance or more capacity – they're adding K blocks. They can be modern, newer controllers or SSDs; we're allowing [customers] to mix and match or decommission when they're ready."

 

About the author: Alison Diana

Managing editor of Enterprise Technology. I've been covering tech and business for many years, for publications such as InformationWeek, Baseline Magazine, and Florida Today. A native Brit and longtime Yankees fan, I live with my husband, daughter, and two cats on the Space Coast in Florida.

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