Datrium Increases Storage Performance With New Server Software, New All-Flash Data Nodes

Datrium, which specializes in providing high-performance primary and secondary storage via converged server and data nodes, is upping its game with the introduction of a new generation of its DVX line featuring end-to-end flash storage.

Datrium on Tuesday unveiled Flash End-to-End, a new higher-performance version its DVX appliances based on a new all-flash-based data node, said Brian Biles, CEO and co-founder of the Sunnyvale, Calif.-based company.

Datrium is building a new kind of hyper-converged infrastructure that takes advantage of new technologies to focus on service and enterprise scalability, Biles told CRN.

[Related: 19 Powerful Hyper-Converged Infrastructure Solutions: New Choices From A Narrowing Field Of Vendors]

"We're now offering flash storage end-to-end with DVX," he said. "Before, we had flash to host, and backup to disk. Now customers can use flash for secondary storage for 'luxury' performance."

Biles said such "luxury" performance was targeted at write-heavy applications where capacity is less an issue, such as virtual desktop infrastructure which requires a lot of write bandwidth.

Datrium's DVX includes software that runs on any server combined with the company's proprietary data nodes. The software handles the virtual machine and I/O processing, while multiple servers take advantage of the shared storage provided by the data nodes.

New Tuesday from Datrium is an upgrade of the software to take advantage of the Intel's new Skylake processors as well as the latest in high-performance NVMe flash storage, said Craig Nunes, Datrium's vice president of marketing.

The company also introduced a new disk-based data node as well as its first flash storage-based data nodes which provide high end-to-end flash storage performance, Nunes told CRN.

Combined, the new DVX provides performance that is five times that of all-flash arrays, and 10 times that of all-flash converged infrastructure offerings, as measured by new benchmarks, Nunes said.

Those benchmarks were measured with global dedupe, compression, erasure coding, and encryption all turned on, he said. "There are no knobs to configure," he said. "With hyper-converged infrastructure, any of those services could impact performance. Bottom line: deployment is super simple."

Datrium is approaching high-performance data requirements in a fundamentally different fashion from its competitors, said Chris Saso, executive vice president of technology at Dasher Technologies, a Campbell, Calif.-based solution provider, and long-time Datrium channel partner.

"The Datrium software on the server provides the fastest reads in local servers," Saso told CRN. "And with its agents, it can provide end-to-end encryption. It does all that because of its integration with the server. No other company can do what Datrium does because of its beachhead on the server."

Datrium allows the introduction of new server nodes that speeds up the entire environment with each node, Saso said.

The way Datrium increases performance via the software on the server nodes or the new data nodes is not just about the performance itself, Saso said.

"Yes, performance is increased," he said. "But flash storage also increases reliability because there are no spinning disks, less heat, and lower power use. That means the mean time between failure is higher, so costs fall over time. People love it. And, as customers increasingly adopt new technologies like KVM and containers, they need increased quality of service. And flash makes that happen."

Datrium is giving its channel partners, who account for 100 percent of its sales, an opportunity to reach out to customers looking to scale beyond standard hyper-converged infrastructure offerings, Nunes said.

"This is a big opportunity to take specific workloads to all-flash storage, including Oracle RAC, large VDI, and IoT," he said. "We think this will open a ton of doors to existing and new customers."