CRN's 2019 Products Of The Year

STORAGE-MIDRANGE

NETAPP AFF A320

WINNER: OVERALL

NetApp this year introduced the AFF A320 all-flash storage system, calling it the first midrange storage array to offer end-to-end NVMe performance. The A320 is a 2U array with 100 Gigabit Ethernet ports and support for NVMe SSDs. It is supported by a new expansion shelf also supporting NVMe that is connected via NVMe-over-RoCE, and scales to a maximum of 24 nodes with 576 SSDs for up to 35 petabytes of maximum capacity. It features latency as low as 100 microseconds, as well as the full range of NetApp storage services.

Subcategory Winner—Technology: HPE Nimble Storage

Hewlett Packard Enterprise has expanded its InfoSight AI Recommendation Engine to boost the performance of the Nimble storage platform. InfoSight—which uses machine learning to prevent storage issues—now delivers recommendations on how to optimize the performance of VMware on Nimble storage with specific actions that can be taken to address storage performance bottlenecks.

Subcategory Winner—Revenue and Profit: IBM Storwize V5100

IBM has expanded its Storwize storage system line with new versions of its Storwize 5000 family that bring high-performance NVMe storage to a wider range of customers. At the top of the Storwize V5000 family is the V5100/F, which includes IBM’s NVMepowered FlashCore storage technology, with scalability to up to 1,520 flash drives.

Subcategory Winner—Customer Demand: Dell EMC Unity XT

Dell EMC’s Unity XT all-flash arrays use software enhancements and the latest generation of Intel processors to double the performance of the previous generation. Unity XT is also NVMe-ready, meaning that customers will ultimately be able to receive a nondisruptive software upgrade to take advantage of high-performance NVMe.

Finalist: StorageCraft OneXafe 5410

StorageCraft’s OneXafe 5410 object-based storage offering runs the OneXafe converged data platform—providing scale-out storage with data protection for both physical and virtualized environments. The OneXafe platform offers integrated data management and data protection designed to meet midsize-business needs. n