American enterprise storage vendor Tegile Systems has expanded its all-flash array range with two new entries - T3600 and T3700.

Both are based on the IntelliFlash software platform, support NAS and SAN connectivity, and offer automated snapshot and replication features, near-instant recovery and either on- or offsite failover.

However, they feature less memory and are considerably cheaper than the existing Tegile hardware, making them perfect for smaller businesses and start-ups.

Meanwhile the latest version of IntelliFlash OS improves provisioning and adds support for inline encryption across the entire array – something that would be useful in highly regulated industries like finance or healthcare.

Starting small

Hybrid and all-flash storage arrays made by Tegile rely on high endurance enterprise-grade NAND memory from SanDisk, made more affordable by proprietary data management and compression algorithms, which allow cramming more data into SSDs.

The company launched its all-flash flagship, the T3800, in June, shipping it with 44TB of storage in a starting configuration. Turns out there was one major problem with the array – it was too large.

At present, not many organizations are willing to invest in flash as their primary storage medium, Rob Commins, VP of Marketing at Tegile, told DatacenterDynamics. The company noticed that its arrays were mostly used to augment the performance of customers’ existing HDD-based storage – and you don’t need 44TB of flash to achieve this effect.

So Tegile responded with a new range of lower capacity arrays. For example, the entry-level T3600 ships with just 9.6TB of storage, available at a starting price of around US$220,000. T3700 boosts the amount of storage to 24TB, and increases starting price to $300,000.

In both cases, additional drives and data reduction techniques can take the effective capacity of a 2U array well beyond 1400TB. The idea is to start slow and cheap, adding SSDs as application requirements grow.

The new arrays can serve as standalone units within a flash-driven architecture or be deployed in front of any legacy storage to improve performance, while deferring replacement.

At the same time, the third version of IntelliFlash OS cuts the time required for provisioning in half and increases the number of  performance profiles which automatically adapt storage for particular workloads, for example ‘SQL Server’, ‘Data Warehouse’ or ‘Virtual Desktop’.

The company also introduced the all-new IntelliCare customer analytics and support portal, which aggregates data about system capacity, performance and general health in real-time.

“Tegile really gets what customers need and they realize that a storage solution that is right for one company may not be right for another,” commented Matt Troka, SVP of product and partner management at systems integrator CDW.

“By giving more options – whether its hybrid arrays or all-flash units with various capacity offerings – Tegile ensures that we’ll have a solution to deliver the capacity and performance that organizations require at a price that’s right.  For around the same price of a Pure Storage FA-400 array, customers are able to get double the capacity for a much better ROI.”

Both T3600 and T3700 are available immediately from Tegile’s channel partners. Customers can also rent a part of the array using ‘Agility Pricing’, which charges them for the capacity used.