UPDATED 08:29 EDT / APRIL 05 2017

INFRA

Seagate bids to slash flash storage costs with new RealStor arrays

Seagate Technology LLC is claiming big performance gains alongside a reduction in cost with the release Monday of a new lineup of all-flash and hybrid storage arrays.

In a blog post, Seagate cites market research on the critical price points of all-flash storage, saying that systems priced under $100,000 have yet to take off in a market that’s set to reach almost $9.3 billion by 2020.

The company is clearly hoping that will change with the release of its new RealStor arrays that come with 20 terabytes of flash storage capacity and offer 300,000 input/output operations per second, priced at less than $50,000. Seagate also emphasized the new arrays are compatible with legacy hard drive storage thanks to an “auto-tiering” feature that allows the movement of data to both flash and hard drives, depending on application requirements. According to Seagate, the approach underscores “the complementary nature of flash and HDDs in enterprise and cloud deployments.”

Seagate’s new RealStor series is available now, and starts with an entry-level system that’s available in three “personalities,” the company said. These include an all-flash version, a hybrid version that combines both flash and traditional hard-drive storage, and an all-HDD array. The company said the hybrid version can automatically promote data to flash storage when faster access is needed, whereas the data will be stored in cheaper hard drives when high speeds are not required. The higher-end all-flash version is targeted at more demanding workloads that require maximum speed and lower latencies.

The same day Seagate rolled out its new RealStor arrays, it also released a white paper that tries to quantify the massive explosion in data worldwide. The study, which was conducted by International Data Corp. on Seagate’s behalf, forecasts a tenfold increase in global data, to 163 zettabytes by 2025.

The study shows that embedded systems, the Internet of Things, real-time and streaming data, and machine learning as a data analytics tool will be the biggest drivers of new storage requirements during this period. As such, Seagate identifies data analytics as the “next big opportunity” that could further drive down the cost of all-flash storage.

“The value of data is really not in the ‘known’, but in the ‘unknown’ where we are vastly underestimating the potentials today,” said Seagate CEO Steve Luczo.

“Technology innovation will be vitally important to evaluate and fully activate the intricacies of what’s contained within this large volume of data—and storage in particular will continue to grow in importance,” IDC analyst Dave Reinsel added.

Image: Anders Bally/Flickr.com

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