Infinidat doubles all-flash array capacity in Infinibox SSA G4 F24

Infinidat has expanded its Infinibox family to double the capacity of its biggest all-flash array while cutting its physical footprint. The move will see the Infinibox SSA G4 F24 now hold up to 33PB (petabytes), up from 17PB, while rack space is down from 14U to 11U.

Even more density will be gained when Infinidat offers the option of quad-level cell (QLC) drives – in place of current triple-level cell (TLC) flash drives – for the G4 later this year.

Infinidat has also added object storage connectivity natively to the Infinibox operating system (OS), InfuzeOS.

Infinibox G4 all-flash arrays are aimed at high-end enterprise use cases that need high performance and availability. The company also offers hybrid – flash and spinning disk – arrays that often serve as backup targets.

Infinidat has doubled G4 storage density mostly by squeezing in more drives of a higher capacity. Where previously in the 17PB iteration there were eight enclosures of 60 20TB drives, now there are eight enclosures of 78 24TB drives. This is also where the footprint shrink comes from.

When Infinidat brings in QLC drives later this year, that capacity density will likely increase by a further 33%. That’s because where TLC drives store data in three bits per flash cell, QLC uses four, so it gains extra switching capacity.

That comes at a cost of reduced durability in terms of cell and drive lifespan, but for workloads that see a lot of sequential input/output (I/O) and less random access – the erasure phase of which shortens drive life – QLC is well-suited.

Also new in this version of the G4 array is object storage natively delivered by the OS. That is in addition to existing file and block access.

Object storage is an important and increasingly popular protocol. It’s the predominant means of storage in the cloud and is often used for AI data because of its ability to scale well.

Object storage will be included in the InfuzeOS and customers can turn it on per volume as they configure their systems, said Infinidat’s chief marketing officer, Eric Herzog, who emphasised the native character of its implementation.

“Some people put the object protocol into a VM [virtual machine] or in a container inside their array,” said Herzog. “But that’s more complexity for the end user to deal with.

“We’ve embedded it natively into the operating system. So, now what you do is when you set up volumes, there’s a checkbox. You set up volume one as block, volume two as object, volume three as file. It can be a mix, or the whole array could be just object, or file or block.”

Also added is the ability to add storage capacity in 5% increments instead of the previous options of buying an array at 60%, 80% or 100% full.

Infinidat offers its arrays on a delayed capital expenditure (capex) and operational expenditure (opex) basis, like many other storage suppliers.

“We have an option where you can buy a fully populated box. You will own it legally, so it’s a capital expenditure, but we only charge you for part of the box. And then if you need more, we turn on more capacity and either us or our channel partner will bill you. So that’s a capacity on demand system, which is a capex,” said Herzog.

“Then for opex, we have full storage as a service. So, we put the array on your floor. We legally retain ownership, and that array is used by you on-site, and we bill you for it. And when you use more storage, we charge you more. If you use less storage, we charge you less.”