SanDisk has created a new all-flash storage platform which the company believes has created a new category for the IT industry, "Big Data Flash."
SanDisk’s InfiniFlash has been built using open source software and can deliver extensive amounts of storage while consuming 80% less power compared to a traditional HDD.
Sumit Sadana, executive vice president and CSO, SanDisk, said: "Building on our long history of industry-defining innovation, we are very excited to bring our first all flash array storage system to market in the form of a category-defining product that we expect will drive flash into big-data workloads at massive scale."
"By offering InfiniFlash below $2/GB before compression and de-duplication, we are changing the industry dynamics in favor of dramatically broader flash adoption in new hyperscale and enterprise workloads."
The InfiniFlash system is configured with up to 64 specifically-designed, hot-swappable cards which deliver 8TB of flash capacity each. When combined the cards can deliver 512 terabytes of raw flash storage in a 3-rack-unit enclosure.
Jim Ganthier, vice president and general manager of engineered solutions, Dell, said: "At Dell, our enterprise and Big Data customers are increasingly demanding higher performance, higher capacity solutions that are delivered in a rapid, reliable, open and cost-effective fashion."
"Solution and appliance innovations such as InfiniFlash not only address these critical customer success metrics but also deliver on the promise that big data insights can drive differentiated business results."
According to SanDisk, InfiniFlash is a storage solution that is aimed at dealing with the demands of big data workloads such as big data analytics, content repositories and media streaming.
Eric Burgener, research director of IDC’s Storage Practice, said: "The creation of the new storage category of Big Data Flash will be a welcome development for 3rd platform computing customers that are struggling to meet the requirements of hyperscale environments with legacy HDD technologies."
"Big Data Flash solutions consistently deliver sub-millisecond latencies, scale to hundreds of PBs, exhibit enterprise class reliability, availability, and serviceability, and bring the secondary economic benefits of flash deployment at scale to big data applications – all at a $/GB price point comparable to that of 15K RPM HDD systems."
"We believe products like InfiniFlash that offer an aggressively compelling price alternative to current scale-out HDD based architectures currently being used for big data applications, will succeed."
InfiniFlash will be available in three different configurations, IF100, IF500 and IF700 and is said to deliver 50 times the performance of an HDD.
