FLASH Tegile Enters the All-Flash Array Market with Super Density Offering Eric Burgener IN THIS FLASH This IDC Flash discusses the recent Tegile announcement, just prior to VMworld 2015 in San Francisco, of an all-flash array (AFA) targeted for use in primary storage environments that leverages SanDisk's InfiniFlash platform. This is a significant milestone in the flash array market for several reasons, which are discussed in this document. SITUATION OVERVIEW On August 26, Tegile announced the IntelliFlash HD Flash Platform, targeting it for what Tegile calls "enterprise workload hyperconsolidation." IntelliFlash HD leverages an OEM product from Tegile investor SanDisk called InfiniFlash that was originally announced in February 2015 and targeted for secondary storage application environments like big data and analytics, media streaming, and content repositories. IDC established a new category of all-flash secondary storage called Big Data Flash around the release of this product and expects to see other similar products from other vendors going forward. SanDisk's AFA building block pushes the envelope on both storage density and power consumption, boasting a density of 170TB/U and power consumption of 750W for an active, fully configured 512TB 3U disk enclosure. Tegile's implementation enhances the basic InfiniFlash platform, allowing the company to deliver the submillisecond latencies that I/O-intensive primary storage environments demand. Founded in 2010, Tegile shipped its first product, a hybrid flash array (HFA) called the Tegile Zebi, in February 2012. Tegile used a "flash first" design in its HFAs that delivered flash write performance for all writes and flash read performance for 97% of all reads. Unlike some competitive HFAs, data resided in flash until its low access frequencies drove its migration back to hard disk drives (HDDs). These systems were built with an integrated storage tiering design that assumed a performance tier and a capacity tier but did not specify media types. In Tegile's HFAs, consumer-grade multilevel cell (MLC) flash composes the performance tier, and HDDs compose the capacity tier. In 2013, Tegile introduced its second-generation T-Series systems, and in June 2014, Tegile added all-flash configurations of its HFAs. These systems support a wide range of the data services necessary for enterprise workload consolidation, including readable and writable snapshots, inline compression and deduplication, AES 256 encryption, native remote replication, and a scriptable command line interface as well as a GUI. With more than 1,500 systems deployed in production across more than 1,000 customers (many of whom are bellwether Fortune 1000 names), and year-over-year revenue growth of 350%, Tegile has clearly been one of the more successful flash-based array start-ups over the past several years. September 2015, IDC #259253
Historically, Tegile's HFAs have been used by midrange customers as general-purpose arrays, hosting mixed workloads including databases, virtual desktops and servers, and other applications that were being consolidated onto virtual infrastructure. While Tegile supports both virtual and physical environments, 97% of Tegile's customers are running their arrays in virtual environments. Many of these midrange customers use Tegile's arrays as their primary storage array, retiring multiple older systems as they migrate workloads. Larger customers have tended to purchase Tegile arrays for dedicated workloads upfront, most specifically databases and VDI, but then begin to move other workloads to them over time. The hybrid Tegile designs combine controller node front ends with disk enclosures, which can accommodate a mix of flash and spinning disk. All controllers are cross-coupled so as to provide redundant paths to all attached devices. Controller nodes are sold in pairs for high-availability reasons. In HFAs, each controller node includes a flash controller and a separate HDD controller. For the IntelliFlash HD project, Tegile replaced the disk enclosures with the SanDisk building block, allowing them to fit up to 512TB of storage capacity on its 8TB custom flash modules in just 3U of rack space. Tegile also configures the controller nodes with just flash controllers (since HDDs cannot be supported in this configuration), incorporates 8TB of NVMe flash on each controller, and can support either two or four controller node configurations. The SanDisk disk enclosures are connected to the controller nodes over 12Gb SAS. Controller nodes (configured with the appropriate network cards to support FC, iscsi, NFS, and/or SMB-3) and disk enclosures can be mixed and matched as needed, but a maximally configured IntelliFlash HD system can deliver over 5M IOPS, up to roughly 10PB of effective capacity (assuming a relatively conservative 3:1 data reduction ratio), simultaneous FC, iscsi, NFS and SMB-3 support, and an effective per-gigabyte cost (again assuming a 3:1 data reduction ratio) of $0.50/GB. This cost metric allows IntelliFlash to be cost effectively used for a wide mix of both primary and secondary storage environments. Tegile includes application profiles with its systems that help optimize performance in environments that include a performance and a capacity tier. For example, database workloads will use a profile that pins redo logs to the performance tier while allowing the actual data to migrate between storage tiers based on Tegile's caching algorithms. Workloads marked as data protection oriented (e.g., backups) completely bypass the performance tier and write directly to the capacity tier. These same application profiles apply to the IntelliFlash HD product, although both tiers in that product are flash based (either NVMe flash in the controllers or disk enclosure-based storage), whereas in the HFAs, the mix is between SSD and HDD. With this extension to its flash array based product line, Tegile can now pursue additional workload types, including primary applications like transactional databases, ecommerce applications, real-time analytics, messaging and collaboration systems, and server consolidation that require consistent submillisecond latencies as well as secondary applications for data protection, development and test, or other less I/O-intensive environments. With IntelliFlash HD's scalable performance, capacity, and cost structure, a strong case can be made to use this system as a single platform, managed under a single GUI, for the consolidation of all types of primary and secondary storage. This opens up new business opportunities for Tegile, significantly increasing its total available market (TAM). Against competitors of both the HFA and AFA types, Tegile leverages its unified simultaneous support for both block and file environments an important capability for mixed workload consolidation as well as its ability to replicate between all of its systems. A portfolio which includes both AFAs and HFAs provides additional flexibility against competitors that only offer one or the other. Customers can deploy IntelliFlash HD for primary storage environments that require all-flash performance all the time, 2015 IDC #259253 2
replicating to Tegile HFAs for data protection and disaster recovery purposes that deliver a lower pergigabyte cost. The fact that Tegile supports both inline compression and deduplication, along with an ability to selectively apply these features at the individual virtual machine (VM) level, provides additional flexibility for consolidating mixed workloads. Tegile supports virtual machine aware monitoring and storage management, regardless of whether the system is used in block or file mode. Tegile's controller node pairs can be configured in either active/active or active/passive modes, allowing the customers to select the approach which best meets their specific requirements. For Tegile, this announcement is significant as it moves them to the small but growing group of vendors that offer both true AFAs and extremely flash-optimized HFAs. But this is a significant announcement for SanDisk as well, since it marks the first use of its InfiniFlash all-flash building block in primary storage environments. When InfiniFlash was first introduced, it was not in a form that was directly ready for deployment by enterprise end users, and it was clearly targeted at secondary storage environments. SanDisk's intent with this product was to enter the systems market with an OEM building block that leveraged the company's flash patent portfolio and technological expertise, made a strongly positive margin contribution, and did not run afoul of its downstream customers that were buying SanDisk component products for inclusion into their own primary storage arrays. SanDisk's OEM building blocks are in evaluation for use as a secondary storage platform at a number of different locations, but Tegile is the first array vendor to announce an end-user solution based on it. And it is clear from Tegile's actions that InfiniFlash can be a foundation building block to a compelling primary storage solution as well. This makes SanDisk a player in both the primary and secondary storage markets, even if only through its partners, resulting in an increased TAM for them as well. FUTURE OUTLOOK There is a strong trend in the industry for enterprise array suppliers to offer both AFAs and HFAs in their product lines, giving customers the opportunity to choose between them so as to best meet their workload requirements. Dell, EMC, HP, HDS, IBM, NetApp, and Oracle have all flash-optimized their legacy enterprise arrays to at least some extent, and five of these (EMC, HP, IBM, NetApp, and Oracle) have also introduced what IDC views as true AFAs. Oracle just announced its first true AFA the All Flash FS on August 27, whereas EMC, HP, IBM, and NetApp have all had AFAs for a while. Dell and HDS offer all-flash configurations of their HFAs. Other flash-optimized HFA start-ups such as Nimble Storage have been incorporating all-flash configurations (not true AFAs) to address the longtailed I/O problem. Tintri, another highly flash-optimized HFA vendor, announced its own AFA, the T5000, in mid-august. Tegile and Oracle are just the two latest vendors to join the ranks of those that offer both a true AFA and a very flash-optimized HFA. Vendors clearly find it easier to offer both options, letting customers choose, than to try and convince every customer that just one approach is the correct one. IDC expects flash-based array vendors to move toward offering both options to stay relevant. While a strong argument can be made for AFAs with respect to primary applications, many enterprises prefer a separate platform for their secondary storage. Over time, secondary storage requirements can continue to be handled with HFAs (allowing consolidation of primary applications as well when they support flash as a persistent tier) or possibly with solutions based around Big Data Flash products like InfiniFlash. For a detailed discussion of the strategic considerations in choosing between AFAs and HFAs in enterprise environments, see Strategic Considerations for Choosing Between All-Flash Arrays and Hybrid Flash Arrays (IDC #258876, September 2015). 2015 IDC #259253 3
Flash is clearly the future of storage. Because of the advantages they provide in performance, endurance, and efficiency, flash-first designs like those Tegile employs will become dominant among HFAs they produce performance profiles more similar to true AFAs. It is interesting how Tegile has been able to leverage its tiering algorithms, originally used with SSD and HDD, with all-flash environments that offer different classes of flash. Dell also offers flash-based array products that support tiering between different classes of flash. These two vendors (Dell and Tegile) have shown how tiering approaches can provide benefit in all-flash environments. With the advent of triple-level cell (TLC) and other more cost-effective flash storage solutions, tiering may become a more widely deployed capability in AFAs of the future. 2015 IDC #259253 4
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