Hybrid 'MASS' Storage Arrays Combine Solid State and Disk-Based Media

• By Leila Meyer
• 02/21/12

Tegile Systems, has released its new Zebi hybrid storage arrays. They support both SAN and NAS environments and can deduplicate cached data and compress data on the fly. Tegile claims that Zebi storage arrays can accelerate applications up to five times and reduce storage capacity requirements by up to 75 percent.

The technology underlying the Zebi array is Tegile's patent-pending Metadata Accelerated Storage System (MASS), which organizes and stores metadata on high speed media, separate from the data. According to Tegile, this approach to metadata storage speeds up the system's functions such as random and sequential input/output, data deduplication, compression, snapshots, and RAID rebuilds.

The Zebi hybrid storage arrays are available in single- and dual-controller arrays, as well as expansion arrays, and feature a no-single-point-of-failure architecture with high-speed solid-state memory and high-capacity hard disk drives. According to information released by the company, "Tegile has architected the performance benefits of solid-state drives throughout the data path, giving every application a performance boost."

Key features of the Zebi hybrid storage arrays include:

• Deep integration of solid-state drives and caching technologies to provide high input/output operations per second and low latency;
• Inline compression and data deduplication on solid state drives and hard disk drives throughout the array to reduce all application data;
• Support for Fibre Channel and iSCSI block protocols for SAN environments;
• Support for both NFS and CIFS file protocols for NAS environments;
• Integrated snapshot and remote replication functionality;
• Application-optimized templates to speed up the provisioning process;
• Built-in backup and replication;
• Unlimited snapshots, cloning, and instantaneous restores; and
• One-click virtual machine optimized storage creation.

Zebi hybrid storage arrays are available now for a starting price of $16,000. Further information about Zebi storage arrays is available on the Tegile Systems site.