Object storage technology developer Amplidata on Monday unveiled a new higher-density version of its scale-out storage solution that puts up to 1.4 petabytes and 39 low-power-consumption Intel processors in a single rack.

The solution is slated to be available first through Quantum, the San Jose, Calif.-based developer of data backup and archiving solutions that works with Amplidata on an OEM basis.

Amplidata's new AS36 storage nodule now brings a total of 12 3-TB hard drives, or a total capacity of 36 TB, to 1 U of rack space, compared to a maximum of 10 in previous versions, said Paul Speciale, vice president of products for the Redwood City, Calif.-based storage vendor.

[Related: Amplidata: New CEO, New $6 Million Funding Round]

The AS36 also represents Amplidata's move from the Atom processor to the Intel E3 processor in its storage nodes, Speciale said.

"Before, we used the Intel Atom processor in our storage nodes," Speciale said. "But it didn't have the performance customers needed. But, they liked the amount of power used. So, we are introducing the Intel E3-1220L v2, a lower-power Xeon processor to run the background agent for management and self healing. It uses only 17 watts."

The front-end management of data stored on the AS36 storage nodes is handled by Amplidata's controller nodes, which are built around Intel's E5-2650 processors. Those controller nodes determine over which nodes the data will be stored and runs Amplidata's core BitSpread erasure code software, which can spread a single instance of data across multiple racks or even multiple data centers for cloud storage users, Speciale said.

The Amplidata scale-out object storage system requires a minimum of three controller nodes and eight storage nodes, Speciale said. Adding more storage nodes gives increased capacity, while adding more controller nodes improves performance, he said.

With the new processors, Amplidata is seeing power consumption of 3 watts per TB when idle and 5 watts per TB at full load.

Amplidata currently has a small direct sales force looking to recruit customers and channel partners, Speciale said.

However, the first partner for the AS36 storage nodes will be Quantum, which will marry the AS36 nodes to Dell E5-based servers running Amplidata's BitSpread operating system in a solution scheduled to ship this quarter. Speciale said Amplidata will begin shipments of its own AS36 nodes in December.

PUBLISHED OCT. 15, 2012