Hybrid arrays vendors were out to get some respect at the Flash Memory Summit. Tegile was one of them, but their approach to hybrid systems has a distinctive all-flash feel. Their recently announced T3800 is an all-flash array that can deliver a minimum of 48TB raw capacity and with compression and deduplication, and can deliver a maximum useable capacity of 1.6PB. But unlike many other flash arrays, disk can be added to the system later to reduce costs and expand capacity even further.
Reverse Hybrid Array
This flash array with a twist has been Tegile’s battle cry almost since its inception. The approach makes sense. An increasing number of data centers want to make their performance pains go away with an all-flash array but they also know that most of their data really does not need to be on a premium priced storage platform. Tegile provides the analytics to understand what data does not need to be on flash and allows you to safely add a hard disk tier with minimal risk of storage performance impact. Essentially, they take the hybrid model and reverse it. The idea is to start with flash first and then add hard disk drives as it makes sense.
Meet the T3800
Tegile’s T3800 delivers 350k IOPs (4k blocks) and claims extremely high endurance per SSD (10 PBW) with a cost per GB of $1.1/ GB assuming a 5X data efficiency from deduplication and compression. It is also a fairly dense configuration, offering 336TB of raw capacity in 10U, with the potential of yielding 5X that amount through its data efficiency capabilities. And remember at any point in the expansion process you can expand with disk instead of flash by leveraging the systems on-board analytics to determine which data sets can be placed on conventional disk storage.
Storage Swiss Take
Tegile meets the requirements we look for in an all-flash array. It delivers mature data services thanks to its ZFS based foundation. This includes replication for disaster recovery, as well as deduplication and compression; features that some all-flash arrays are still lacking. And the new T3800 delivers the mid-range performance that is both appropriate and affordable for the majority of “normal” data centers. Finally it extends these requirements by a reverse hybrid approach that allows you to expand the array with disk at any point in time – if or when it makes sense to do so.
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George Crump is the Chief Marketing Officer at VergeIO, the leader in Ultraconverged Infrastructure. Prior to VergeIO he was Chief Product Strategist at StorONE. Before assuming roles with innovative technology vendors, George spent almost 14 years as the founder and lead analyst at Storage Switzerland. In his spare time, he continues to write blogs on Storage Switzerland to educate IT professionals on all aspects of data center storage. He is the primary contributor to Storage Switzerland and is a heavily sought-after public speaker. With over 30 years of experience designing storage solutions for data centers across the US, he has seen the birth of such technologies as RAID, NAS, SAN, Virtualization, Cloud, and Enterprise Flash. Before founding Storage Switzerland, he was CTO at one of the nation's largest storage integrators, where he was in charge of technology testing, integration, and product selection.
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