Flash storage developer GridIron Systems on Monday introduced an updated version of its TurboCharger flash-based appliance, as well as a new hybrid flash array that ties the TurboCharger to a NetApp Engenio storage box.

GridIron's TurboCharger GT-1500 flash storage solution sits between a server and a SAN to accelerate storage operations by optimizing the traffic between the two, said Franklyn Jones, vice president of marketing for the Sunnyvale, Calif.-based company.

"Although the TurboCharger incorporates flash storage technology, it's not a flash array," Jones said. "Instead, it sits in front of a SAN to offload high-value read operations from the SAN devices so they can focus on doing a better job with read operations."

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The GridIron TurboCharger features the vendor's Set-Ranking software that takes a holistic view of the communications going on between servers and storage arrays, Jones said.

Set-Ranking profiles the applications and data to optimize traffic between the servers and storage depending on available bandwidth, IOPS (I/Os per second) performance, the simultaneous execution of multiple current applications and the minimum network latency, he said.

"These are the four things that most impact storage network traffic," he said. "Because it monitors traffic continuously, it makes decisions continuously about which data to put in the flash storage cache."

Jones contrasted that to other flash storage appliances that improve performance by focusing on the storage array in order to put the data that is most accessed into cache to improve storage performance. "We look at what's going into and coming out of the servers as well," he said.

The TurboCharger drops in the network between the server and the SAN and immediately doubles storage performance, Jones said. "We've seen up to a ten-times increase in performance, but that's rare," he said.

The TurboCharger GT-1500 is GridIron's second version of the appliance. It features 500,000 IOPS performance, or 1 million IOPS in a dual configuration, as well as 3.2-GHz per second bandwidth with up to 128-TB total flash storage capacity, all of which are about double those of the original model, Jones said.

NEXT: New Hybrid Flash Array With Help From NetApp Engenio

Also new from GridIron on Monday is the OneAppliance hybrid flash array, the company's first foray into the storage array business. The OneAppliance marries a pair of TurboCharger GT-1500 appliances with a NetApp Engenio E-5400 series array, a product line NetApp got with its acquisition last year of OEM storage maker Engenio.

"The NetApp Engenio array was designed for high-performance, high-capacity environments," GridIron's Jones said. "It's a field-proven system. It's simple to use, highly reliable, and easy to scale to 360 TB."

The TurboCharger GT-1500 is available with a list price of $236,000 for a dual configuration, which is how they are typically sold for high-availability purposes, Jones said.

The OneAppliance hybrid flash array is also now available. It is priced at about $300,000 with 180 TB of capacity and a dual TurboCharger GT-1500, he said.

GridIron was formed in 2007 and is still in the process of building its channel partner base, Jones said. The company has a handful of channel partners now, and it plans to launch its first formal channel program by the end of the year, he said.

GridIron is privately held, and it has raised about $50 million from venture capital investors. Jones said the company declines to talk about its financials.

PUBLISHED OCT. 1, 2012