This week’s storage digest features two funding rounds concluded in the pandemic, and data virtualizer Delphix declaring its original data source coverage mission is complete. We move on swiftly to an Excelero performance comparison with NetApp, and Pure Storage and Kioxia adding yet another data service to its Kumoscale all-flash array.
Couchbase funding
NoSQL database startup Couchbase has nabbed $105m in a G-series round led by new investor GPI Capital. It will spend the money on product development and global go-to-market capabilities. Total funding now stands at $260m.
Couchbase will complement feature development in its enterprise NoSQL server and mobile database platform with Couchbase Cloud, a fully managed Database-as-a-Service offering.
Couchbase says it has more than 500 enterprise customers, including 30 per cent of the Fortune 100, and receives nearly $100m in committed annual recurring revenue. It recorded over 70 per cent total contract value growth, 50+ per cent new business growth, and 35+ per cent growth in average subscription deal size in its latest fiscal year.
Delphix: Our (original) mission is completed
Delphix has declared the completion of its original mission to provide a comprehensive data platform that virtualizes data from all the main sources enabling its use for data operations (DataOps). This means supplying data swiftly and smoothly to DevOps teams and for use in analytics, AI, regulatory compliance, migration and other use cases.
In late 2019, Delphix made its data platform SDKs available to ISVs and they developed a host of new plugins this year covering;
- Legacy platforms: mainframe, Informix, etc.
- New data platforms: MongoDB, CouchDB, etc.
- Cloud platforms: Aurora, RedShift, Azure SQL
- Workflow, monitoring platforms: ServiceNow, Splunk, etc.
- Automation platforms: Ansible, Terraform, Jenkins, Chef, etc.
That means data source coverage has expanded out from Oracle, Microsoft SQL Server, IBM DB2, SAP ASE, SAP HANA, and other major databases and apps. The SDK availability has enabled much fuller coverage.
Delphix CEO Jedidiah Yueh said: “Customers need a comprehensive data platform to help drive transformations. Otherwise, it’s like trying to fly a plane without sufficient instrumentation. With our most recent platform release, we have completed everything on our initial roadmap.”
His pitch is that enterprises need fast access to both modern and legacy data sources fuel DevOps, analytics compliance and all the other workloads needing data; anything under a digital transformation heading. Delphix can provide data from more sources faster than any other product.
Excelero exceeds NetApp and Pure
Blocks & Files has seen a presentation slide from NVMe-oF storage supplier Excelero that compares its performance with NetApp’s E-Series and Pure’s FlashArray//X. Excelero claims it has 10x better price/performance and its product scales out linearly while the other two do not. Here’s the slide;
Kioxia thinly provisions KumoScale
Kioxia has added thin provisioning to its KumoScale storage software as it keeps on plugging away by adding features to the product.
KumoScale provides a scale-out aggregated multi-SSD block storage pool across an NVMe over Fabrics (NVMe-oF) connection to flash storage nodes. NVMe over RoCE and TCP are supported.
Host applications perform block IO to flash volumes and the Kumoscale software maps these volumes to individual flash drives and so enables the IOs to complete. The software’s Provisioner Service tracks the fleet of SSDs and storage nodes and manages the dynamic mapping of user volumes to nodes and physical drives. It processes provisioning requests, selecting the best KumoScale node, choosing the SSD and how to map it, and creates the volume via the REST API.
The software has REST API links to storage provisioning and orchestration frameworks such as Kubernetes, OpenStack, Intel RSD and Portworx.
In April Kioxia added Kubernetes CSI-compliant snapshots and clones to the KumoScale software. Joel Dedrick, GM for networked storage software at KIOXIA America, said: “We will continue to expand available options in order to help more users reap the benefits of a disaggregated architecture based on an NVMe-oF shared storage model.”
Wasabi funding
Cloud storage startup Wasabi has pulled in a $30m funding C-round, taking total investment to $110m.
The firm provides AWS-like storage at lower prices. It says it has a predictable pricing model that is one-fifth the cost of legacy cloud storage offerings with no fees for egress or API requests. Wasabi said it has tripled customer numbers, with more than 3,500 in EMEA, and claims 400 per cent revenue growthin the past year.
The funding will be used to expand Wasabi’s infrastructure and capacity to meet global demand and geographical expansion in Europe, APAC, Canada and Latin America. Wasabi plans to extend its hot cloud storage service to Canada and additional markets in Europe, APAC and Latin America through channel partners.
Shorts
Acronis has announced an artificial intelligence partnership with Roma, the Italian football club. Acronis will provide AI and machine learning technology to process football data to optimise game and business operations, and cyber protection for mission-critical workloads.
Igneous has completed a security assessment by the Trusted Partner Network (TPN) and so meets media and entertainment industry-specific requirements around content security, and general security standards focused on corporate governance, employee management, and operations.
Kingston is shipping 7.68TB capacity DC500R and DC450R SATA SSDs – The ‘R’ stands for read-intensive use. A DC1000M 7.68TB U.2 NVMe PCIe SSD is coming soon. All three have a 5-year warranty.
