3dmentat - Fotolia
Qumulo storage refresh taps into newest HPE Apollo servers
New Qumulo scale-out file storage software can be consumed locally or run as a hybrid cloud available via a Hewlett Packard Enterprise GreenLake consumption license.
File storage specialist Qumulo has configured additional hardware options under an expanded partnership with Hewlett Packard Enterprise.
The new Qumulo storage appliance for unstructured data combines the Qumulo Cloud File system on HPE Apollo 4200 Gen10 servers. HPE will sell the packaged Qumulo SKUs and Qumulo said it will provide end-to-end product support. HPE and Qumulo first struck an OEM partnership in 2016.
The new products allow customers to implement Qumulo storage software locally or run it as a hybrid cloud available via an HPE GreenLake consumption license.
Qumulo said it has upgraded its Core file system for unstructured storage, which analyst firm IDC predicts will grow 60% to $10.1 billion by 2021.
Three new Qumulo hybrid flash models are available in 2U HPE Apollo servers. All the models require a four-node starting point. The HPE-90T provides 90 TB of raw storage per node and the HPE-192T scales to 192 TB per node. The third model, HPE-336T, is an active archive system that tops out at 336 TB per node.
Amita Potnis, a research director in IDC's infrastructure systems, platforms and technologies group, said Qumulo storage on HPE competes in one of the hottest sectors of enterprise IT. Potnis said the Qumulo-HPE offering gives admins the ability to manage appliances and the data more efficiently.
Qumulo competes with products from large companies such as Dell EMC Isilon scale-out NAS systems and NetApp filers, as well as smaller software-defined storage vendors.
"Established file systems players will continue to maintain and grow their market share, but there is enough opportunity for Qumulo-HPE to grow in specific markets across the globe," Potnis said.
Qumulo prioritizes flash targets
Qumulo storage software writes data to solid-state drives (SSDs) to ingest metadata and run data analytics. Qumulo's predictive learning engine warms the internal cache to accelerate data moving from flash to disk.
Qumulo's lead product manager, Molly Presley, said the new Qumulo systems enhance end-to-end data security via HPE's silicon root of trust handshake built into Apollo Gen10. That's HPE's effort to harden security down to the chip level.
Presley said hyperscale enterprises want easy and secure connectivity to multiple hybrid clouds.
"We effectively have limitless scale. Customers are not forced into an object storage tier or a second tier of storage. They can actually keep it as a single tier of file storage," Presley said.
Presley said Qumulo added role-based access control as a prerequisite to expand its storage to serve companies in healthcare, government and other regulated industries. She said HPE Apollo's real-time predictive hardware analytics complement Qumulo's analytics for capacity and performance.
Potnis said key updates by Qumulo include real-time analytics to project data growth, with visibility up to the prior 52 weeks. Qumulo also enables admins to view clients or "hotspots" through contextual information leading to actionable data.
Qumulo has a separate OEM deal with Dell EMC and sells its own line of branded QC-Series all-flash and hybrid hardware appliances. Qumulo also sells the P-Series NVMe flash, also aimed at unstructured data, and the complementary K-Series archive appliance.
