Infinidat launched new hardware, software and services yesterday. I’m grateful to Eric Herzog and others for briefing me ahead of time to prepare this post. For my earlier assessment of Infinidat click here.My Figure above shows annual market spending on storage systems and raw storage devices (DRAM, NAND and HDDs) over the last 20 years, illustrating the increasing disconnection in trends.
InfiniBox SAA and InfiniBox – AMD at the heart of the new hardware
Infinidat’s hardware refresh is based on its shift from Intel to AMD EPYC processors. The 9554P 64C chip is a single socket design with 64 cores (up from the maximum of 48 cores used in its previous designs). Other storage systems suppliers also use AMD EPYC chips – IBM in its ESS3500 for instance. As a smaller supplier of x86 processors AMD’s strategy is in part based on its introduction of higher performance and more integrated products earlier in its road-map than its large rival, Intel. The new processor allows users of Infinidat’s new storage systems to use PCIe Gen5 I/O devices and DR5 DRAM memory chips for the first time. The new chip is also 20% more power efficient per core than those used in its third generation arrays..
The new InfiniBox SSA F14xxT all-flash range has a wide spread of large capacities – ranging from 155TB usable (387TB effective) on the base T1404T model to a maximum of 617TB (1542TB) on the T1416T top-end model. It will go even further – stretching all the way up to 1.233PB (3.082PB) on the yet to introduced F1632T model (see my Figure above). In addition to the new higher capacities Infinidat is also now allowing its customers to purchase base units in the T14xxT and upgrade them over time – a journey which could go from 30% (1 unit) to 60% (2), to 80% (4) to 100% (8) capacity over time. Models in this range have a height of 14U for installation in industry standard racks.
Infinidat has also announced a new high-end model to its F44xx HDD-based storage array. The F4420 utilizes 20TB disks, giving a maximum usable capacity of 3.17PB (7.92PB effective capacity). I show the effective and usable capacities of this range in my Figure above.
InfuzeOS V8 operating system
Alongside the new hardware Infinidat has also introduced version 8 of its InfuzeOS operating system today. It comes for free as standard on the new arrays and is backwards compatible with its third generation arrays introduced in 2019 at a small cost. InfuzeOS includes the company’s Neural Cache, Infinisafe, InfiniOps, InfiniVerse and SSA Express software. It is the foundation of the company’s Enterprise data services, including its Autonomous Automation ‘set it and forget it’ IT operations model. It’s the basis of the company’s guarantees for performance and availability, as well as its InfiniSafe cyber resilience and recovery services.
Some customers use InfuzeOS for consolidating all flash arrays built by other suppliers in their own and co-location data centers and/or from the Cloud for Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery. Microsoft Azure has been added as a Cloud platform in addition to AWS, where it has been hosted for a year. It is the same software that runs on its own boxed, although Infinidat doesn’t include in its 100% availability guarantee for obvious reasons.
An impressive launch from a smaller provider
I like Infinidat’s approach to the market. It provides a coherent combination of software, hardware and services for Fortune 2000 customers and smaller cloud service providers (who, unlike the largest ones, often lack the resources to develop their own storage software). It has the expertise to grow on its own to become one of the market leading suppliers in the storage systems market. I hope it doesn’t falter like a number of new entrants over the last ten years, or get taken over to be part of another vendor’s offerings (Simplivity, Nimble in HPE, Texas Memory Systems in IBM or even EMC in Dell).