Tegile Prepares To Release Line Of All-NVMe Flash Storage Arrays

Flash storage vendor Tegile Systems Tuesday unveiled a new line of arrays based completely on high-performance NVMe all-flash technology.

The new Tegile IntelliFlash N-series of NVMe-based arrays is the first for the Newark, Calif.-based company, which had previously introduced hybrid arrays that include NVMe as the performance tier and standard SSDs as the capacity tier, said Rob Commins, Tegile's vice president of marketing.

"With the N-series, there's no cheap and deep back end," Commins told CRN. "This is a 2U NVMe screamer box."

[Related: Tegile Unveils Option To Refresh Storage Controller Independent Of Storage Media]

NVMe, or non-volatile memory express, is a flash storage interface that connects non-volatile memory via a server's PCIe bus to provide higher performance than standard SATA or SAS SSDs.

Tegile introduced two models in its N-series. The 5200 was designed to provide a complete capacity write per day, and provides about 1.5 million IOPs of performance. The 5800 is targeted at up to three complete capacity writes per day with up to 3 million IOPs.

Commins said that while the company's hybrid array could be configured for all-NVMe capacity, it would be difficult to expand the capacity with additional capacity shelves without NVMe over fabric. "NVMe over fabric is not yet ready for prime time," he said.

Capacity of the 5200 and 5800 arrays can be expanded via an additional array or by the addition of external SAS-based storage shelves, he said.

NVMe is a growing part of customer discussions, said Scott Hruby, chief technical architect at Secure Data Technologies, an O'Fallon, Ill.-based solution provider and Tegile channel partner.

"Both us and our customers are initiating the NVMe discussion," Hruby told CRN. "NVMe is already a big buzzword. And a lot of that buzz comes from the marketing of Tegile and its competitors."

Any customer hesitation about NVMe is fading quickly, Hruby said. "The discussions are getting serious," he said. "People are excited about what NVMe will bring as they increasingly run into storage performance bottlenecks."

Tegile is unique in that its NVMe array runs the same operating system as the company's entry-level flash storage arrays, Secure Data Technologies' Hruby said. "So as NVMe advances, the OS adapts to let NVMe scale accordingly," he said.

Charlie Collins, director of sales at Secure Data Technologies, told CRN that his company was an early adopter of Tegile, and has worked with the company for about four years.

"Tegile is the ideal partner," Collins said. "They are committed to our market, and they meet all our technical requirements. It's been an exemplary relationship."

The new N-series of all-NVMe flash storage arrays is expected to be available shortly after the VMworld conference being held late this month, Commins said.

The company is preparing a new training video for partners, but partners will not be required to get new certifications, he said. "It runs all of the same software stack as our other arrays," he said. "It has all the same bells and whistles, but it's faster."