American start-up Primary Data has officially launched its first product, a storage orchestration platform called DataSphere.
DataSphere promises to unite all the different storage types used in a data center into a single, virtualized dataspace, whether direct-attached, network-attached, in private or public cloud, in order to help increase utilization and reduce overprovisioning.
DataSphere supports block, object and file storage, and enables IT administrators to easily migrate data across different storage systems and protocols.
The software will be demonstrated next week at the VMworld 2016 conference in Las Vegas.
No more storage tiers
Primary Data emerged from stealth in late 2014 to build storage tools for the software-defined data center. The company is funded by $60 million in venture capital and is headquartered in Los Altos, California.
It was co-founded by David Flynn and Rick White, who were previously responsible for flash storage juggernaut Fusion-io – sold to SanDisk for $1.1 billion in 2014. The company also employs personal computing pioneer Steve Wozniak as its chief scientist.
According to Primary Data, half of enterprise organizations manage at least 10 different storage systems, and a third manage 20 or more.
DataSphere software creates a single virtualized dataspace for all available storage resources, whether located on-premise or in the cloud. The platform enables users to easily shift data between different storage systems and automatically align application I/O requirements with the right storage media. Meanwhile a feature called Smart Objectives prevents any impact to application availability and performance during data migration.
DataSphere was originally announced at VMworld 2015 and is fully compatible with vCenter – it can integrate VMware’s vSAN into the dataspace along with physical resources. But despite its penchant for all things VMware, DataSphere remains vendor-agnostic, and works with storage infrastructure from the likes of NetApp and IBM.
“Storage diversity across flash, cloud, hyper-converged, and traditional systems give enterprises the right storage tool for any job, but until now, data has been trapped in the typical storage silos, forcing IT to overprovision and limit the value of billions of dollars of enterprises storage investments,” said Lance Smith, CEO of Primary Data .
“DataSphere automatically orchestrates the right data to the right place at the right time according to IT-defined objectives, without business or application disruption. This industry first can easily cut customers’ storage costs in half by finally aligning data to the ideal storage system according to business needs.”
DataSphere is available immediately from Primary Data and its reseller partners, on an annual subscription basis.