Folks, I’ve got the blues today. Didn’t mean to get them, ‘just did.
I spent an hour this morning on the phone with a storage start-up in Minnesota, Pranah. Here is their press release.
Pranah Set To Redefine Data Storage
for Small and Midsized Businesses
Combining Highly Efficient Hardware and Software to Produce
the Most Complete Network Storage System Available in a 1U Footprint
SAINT PAUL, MN (PRWEB), JUNE 23, 2009 – Pranah Storage Technologies (www.pranah.com) today announced it has created the easiest-to-use and most complete network storage system for the under-$50K price class. (This class is the fastest-growing part of the storage business, according to IDC’s latest report on storage industry revenues, issued June 5.) Pranah’s system features purpose-built hardware, designed specifically for data storage, combined with storage software applications that are typically seen only in high-end systems. Designed for simplicity and scalability, the company says its Pranah 2000 Series provides more value than any storage system available to small and midsized businesses (SMBs).
“We’re doing nothing less than redefining reliability, flexibility, and value in storage networking for this underserved market,” said Steve Carter, Pranah’s CEO. The company’s intelligent network storage products incorporate both standards-based and patented proprietary technology. By developing and controlling its own hardware and software, Pranah improves ease-of-use for sophisticated storage applications. “In a difficult economic environment, our solution allows customers to cut their costs both for the amount of hardware required and the staffing associated with overly-complex systems,” he said.
Performance and Scalability
Pranah’s 2000 Series storage controllers can be aggregated, thereby delivering increased storage performance previously unavailable on systems in this price class. The company’s support of 10Gb/s iSCSI allows it to stand out from the competition and delivers unique advantages in supporting applications requiring massive storage demands, such as video surveillance/security, medical imaging, document retention, video production, and cloud computing.
Power, Cooling, and Density Improvements
The new product line features “green-friendly” design that utilizes a U.S.-patented side-vented rail system to improve cooling by 31%, and allow a storage density improvement of up to 50%. Pranah 2000 Series systems do not require dedicated data racks, and therefore can share the same rack with IP switch and routing equipment, telco equipment, and racked servers.
Product Details
The elegant design of Pranah 2000 Series systems is based on simplicity, delivering more value in a 1U form factor than any other product on the market today, including more disks per U, and featuring plug-and-play expansion with SAS, SATA, or Fibre Channel drives.
-
Each system comes with standard software (called the Pranah Control Suite™), which includes Thin Provisioning, Tiered Storage, Snapshot, and Replication, all managed from a simple browser interface.
-
It features a Distributed File System (DFS) that enables geographic diversity of critical data.
-
It integrates both SAN and NAS within the same (1U) storage unit.
-
It can include multiple storage controllers and multiple host connections.
-
It features a patented cooling system.
-
And it’s scalable without extensive product support or costly reinvestment.
Value Proposition and Differentiation
Because Pranah has developed its own hardware and software intellectual property, it offers a unique value proposition to its customers. Elegant design and tight integration make the system simple to operate and easy to maintain. A key benefit of the company’s systems is that NAS is integrated as a standard feature. By doing so, the customer does not have to do its own time-consuming, expensive integration, and maintain third-party software and hardware to support file-based data. Storage applications such as Thin Provisioning, Tiered Storage, Snapshot, Replication, and Distributed File System (DFS) were developed by Pranah to be easy to use yet fully functional, and they all come loaded on the system, easily activated with a software key when required.
Company Strengths
Pranah has a seasoned management team, with a proven history in the data storage, software, and military markets. Its development team has a combined 200 years of hardware and software experience in bringing storage and server products to market, and a strong intellectual property position. Pranah’s products redefine storage networking by simplifying operation, increasing reliability, reducing complexity, and significantly lowering both cap ex and op ex costs.
Product Availability
Pranah’s 2000 Series product line will initially include three different control units, and three expansion units. Product is shipping in late July in limited availability to 15 key customers and resellers for testing and evaluation, with general availability in September.
Advantages for Smaller Businesses
“Now, businesses that balked at six-figure price tags for a shared storage system have an better answer,” said Dave Walstad, Pranah’s VP of sales and marketing. “Pranah’s systems were designed with the small business customer in mind. To gain further leverage on a Pranah investment, Disaster Recovery can be easily deployed, since shared storage can be easily replicated off-site. What’s more, SAN and NAS are delivered in the same box, so there’s no need for two separate systems, with the attendant complexities of integration and maintenance. We’re confident ours are the lowest cost, smallest footprint, easiest-to-use storage systems in the under-$50K price class. And they have the flexibility to meet the ever-changing needs of growing businesses.”
These guys want to compete with HP/LeftHand and Dell/EqualLogic as the gear provider to the SMB. They say that they have a lower price than Compellent and also have a NAS head, which Compellent really doesn’t deliver without a lot of pain. $10K gets you a single controller, an iSCSI connection and 4 SATA 1TB drives. They have some cool (pun) patented technology for side venting 1u rack mounted storage, and they have no screws or cables connecting drives to the housing, but instead borrow some military specification shock resistent mounting foo. Like 3PAR and EMC, you can aggregate their controllers to support better performance and more spindles. Thin provisioning allows you to add more drives anytime.
You can source drives from your reseller, but if you do, the reseller becomes your tech support provider if drives fail. Pranah will stand by its controller.
They said that they were compelled to embedd all of that “value add” technology on the controller, rather than going the Xiotech route, by financial wiz kids (VCs) who told them that, since the big boys were doing it, they should too. I tried really hard not to cry, but it gave me the blues.
Then, I had another call, which I had forgotten about, with a San Francisco start-up offering a data protection service that leverages Data Domain boxes. If you don’t have a DD appliance to mash your data so it can be transferred to a DD appliance at the data center where they have some cage space, you need to buy one. They tout “the only SLA in the evaulting business” and say that their service and price point is targeted to the sensibilities of the midsized company that doesn’t like tape and doesn’t really want to do anything about classifying data assets to determine which ones require protection.
The smart fellow I spoke with said that his service simply reflects the prevailing sentiment in the market. “Tape sucks” — because no one really knows how to do a backup. “Tape is dead” — because Gartner was paid by EMC to say so. “De-duplication is hot.” Customers don’t really want to sort the junk drawer and encouraging them to do so — even if it is for their own good or would improve the efficacy of their continuity strategy – ”lengthens the sales cycle.”
Hard to shake, them blues.