New Infinidat And WDC Solid-State Storage Systems

Infinidat introduced a solid state array to provide a lowest latency product to supplement its Infinibox HDD and DRAM based storage array. Western Digital introduced it high-performance Ultrastar Edge Server in a 2U and rugged version for for real-time analytics, AI, deep learning, ML training and inference, and video transcoding at the edge. Let’s look at these recent announcements.

Infinidat introduced a new solid state array (SSA) to supplement its DRAM and HDD based Infinibox. Like the HDD-based Infinibox, the Infinibox SSA includes the companies Neural Cache deep learning software algorithms and extensive DRAM cache. The company says that it consistently delivers performance and latency results that surpass all-flash arrays (AFAs).

According to Infinidat, “The InfiniBox SSA for profiles requiring consistent ultra-low latency is complementary to the standard InfiniBox system for general-purpose applications, which are the vast majority of enterprise applications. A common software base between the standard InfiniBox and new InfiniBox SSA provides seamless, transparent data mobility between the platforms, enabling customers to reduce overall TCO while optimizing latency based on application demands.”

Western Digital announced the availability of its new high-performance Ultrastar Edge server family that brings compute closer to where data is generated for faster processing, lower latency and real-time decision making. WDC introduced this product as a specialized storage server along with data transport, NVMe-oF storage and high density JBODs and JBOFs storage products. 

WDC says that these products are designed for cloud service providers, telcos and system integrators. They are easy to transport, deploy and scale in the field, at colocation facilities, in a factory, or in remote data centers. The new family of products includes the Ultrastar Edge-MR, an extremely rugged, stackable and transportable server for military and specialized field teams working in harsh remote environments and the Ultrastar Edge, a transportable 2U rack-mountable server with a portable case for colos and edge data centers. These systems are shown below. The company said that both solutions are now sampling will be generally available in CQ4 2021.

The core of each Ultrastar Edge solution is a durable, high-speed server that supports up to 40 cores with two Intel Xeon Scalable Processors, an NVIDIA T4 GPU and eight Ultrastar NVMe™ SSDs providing up to 61TB of storage. This unique combination is intended for real-time analytics, AI, deep learning, ML training and inference, and video transcoding at the edge. It features two 50Gb or one 100Gb Ethernet connection for sending critical data back to the cloud or data center when connected.

The Ultrastar Edge-MR is an extremely rugged, stackable solution that is designed and tested in accordance with MIL-STD-810G-CHG-1 standards for limits of shock and vibration, and to the MIL-STD-461G standard for electromagnetic interference. The unit is also rated IP32 to provide ingress protection against water and debris. Both Ultrastar Edge solutions also feature the Trusted Platform Module 2.0, a tamper-evident enclosure and is built to meet FIPS 140-2 Level 2 security standard to help store, secure, transfer and disseminate sensitive data.

Infinidat’s Solid State Array complements its HDD and DRAM based Infinibox. Western Digital introduces its Ultrastar Edge storage server for the field, colos and edge data centers.