DataCore Software today announced DataCore ONE, its vision for storage infrastructure, designed to accelerate the adoption of software-defined storage (SDS) in enterprise data centers, the cloud and edge computing; centralizing command and control of different classes of storage spanning primary, secondary and archive. The company also announced the availability of a number of components that help make this vision a reality, including a flexible hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) appliance, subscription-based licensing, a new cloud-based analytics service, and a number of enhancements to its already powerful software-defined storage technology. 

Central to the DataCore ONE vision is the new cloud-based predictive analytics engine, DataCore Insight Services (DIS), that provides actionable insights from a 360-degree view of infrastructure-wide storage. The SaaS control plane draws on telemetry and the collective learnings from thousands of customers around the globe for early problem detection, best practice recommendations and capacity planning. The combination of machine learning and artificial intelligence detects current or foreseeable anomalies in the data storage infrastructure, while the built-in recommendation engine directs designated individuals to the most appropriate corrective actions.

The prescribed steps are highly automated and may be executed remotely from the same web user interface, or performed on-premises behind the firewall, as site-specific security policies dictate. The resulting value is expressed as reduced downtime, faster response, higher efficiencies and substantial cost savings. Additionally, containerized applications, virtual machines and bare metal hosts can all benefit from virtual storage pools that automatically place hot, moderate and cold data in the most appropriate class of storage.

Architectural flexibility to eliminate silos and lock-in

The new family of DataCore HCI-Flex appliances combines the simplicity of hyperconverged systems with the flexibility of software-defined storage at a very competitive price-performance point. Customers can choose from multiple 1U and 2U configurations with either VMware vSphere or Microsoft Hyper-V pre-installed. All the robust data services of DataCore software-defined storage are included such as smart caching, thin provisioning, dynamic-auto-tiering, and Parallel I/O acceleration, which delivers up to 500% storage performance improvements. An intuitive smart deployment wizard gets the HCI-Flex appliance up and running in a matter of minutes. Once deployed, the HCI-Flex appliance can pool and manage not only internal storage, but external storage systems as well, regardless of vendor or underlying technology.

The HCI-Flex appliance also enables users to independently scale compute and storage, based on business needs. The flexible deployment model helps eliminate silos and vendor lock-in so customers can transition to hyperconverged infrastructure on their own terms with confidence. In remote office/branch office (ROBO) and edge computing environments, a synchronously mirrored pair ensures high availability without the complexity and cost of three-node clusters-and is flexible enough to add a third asynchronous replica to a central on-premises location or to a public cloud.

"We've heard from many IT leaders around the world about the challenges they face with multiple storage silos and the desire to fully realize the promise of software-defined storage by unifying them under a single intelligent layer. With DataCore ONE, we are delivering on this vision," said Gerardo A. Dada, CMO of DataCore. "Building on the company's vast inventory of intellectual property and patents, we are presenting this unified architecture to solidify DataCore as a complete and incredibly flexible software-defined storage platform that will help diverse IT environments achieve the maximum value from storage investments, simplify management, and be ready for the technologies and challenges of the future."

Intuitive workflows for provisioning, safeguarding, and monitoring

Featuring an extensive UI redesign, DataCore's latest software release includes new automation capabilities to help free ITops from procedurally-intensive manual tasks. Now, they can command and control the comprehensive set of data services from a bird's-eye view through intuitive workflows for provisioning, safeguarding, and monitoring the entire storage infrastructure. A complete REST API library encourages programmability and further integration with third-party products. New encryption-at-rest technology brings advanced security measures across pools of diverse storage arrays, using military-grade XTS-AES 256-bit encryption algorithms that can be applied across different storage systems. It contrasts with other error-prone approaches that require multiple device-specific runbooks. There are many other enhancements in the latest software release including improved VVOLs management, streamlined deployment, and increased resiliency for metro-cluster environments.

"The reality for most organizations today is that they are running multiple technologies on diverse equipment from different suppliers, and they need a new level of dynamic flexibility in order to turn their environments into cost-efficient, reliable, high-performance systems," said Johnathan Kendrick, director of business development, Universal Systems, Inc. "With innovations like DataCore Insight Services and the HCI-Flex appliance, DataCore is giving the power back to the end user in how they deploy, manage and secure their storage systems. This not only provides a level of predictability and confidence in how they modernize their IT environments, it also extends the value of existing investments and provides them with an operational model that can easily adapt to the technological innovation, changing business needs and challenges of the future."

"IT leaders are now counting on software-defined storage to resolve many upcoming challenges... I&O leaders are drawn to software-defined storage for the flexibility of deployment choices (data center, edge, public cloud), as well as the ability to deploy it on industry-standard hardware," writes Julia Palmer, research vice president at Gartner. "By decoupling the software from the industry-standard hardware, I&O leaders can maintain hardware for a longer period without being forced to upgrade and migrate, while avoiding hardware vendor lock-in and forklift upgrades. The flexible pay-as-you-go purchasing model of software-defined storage can also help realize cost-efficiencies."

More pricing options

DataCore's new subscription-based model is designed for organizations eager to reduce capital expenditures. Customers can now choose between perpetual or subscription licenses. Both include support and software updates. All licenses are based on capacity with a simple price per TB irrespective of number of nodes used for maximum deployment flexibility.