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Whiptail whips out SME-friendly flash array

Just half a MEELLLION dollars. More M than S, then

Enterprise flash array fettler Whiptail has announced a flash array for the rest of us: the WT-1100, aimed at branch offices and small/medium enterprises.

It's a diminutive 1UK rack enclosure holding up to 4TB of flash which delivers 100,000 IOPS with a latency less than 0.1msecs. The device runs the same RACERUNNER software as Whiptail's enterprise-targeted ACCELA and INVICTA arrays. Whiptail likes using all-caps names for its gear, by the way.

Whiptail's latest product comes with an installation wizard to make life for customers easier. The company suggests the array could be used for VDI, email and database applications.

The WT-1100 is Whiptail's entry-level offering, positioned below the 2U ACCELA. It offers up to 12TB capacity, delivers 250,000 IOPS and has 2GB/sec throughput.

Their high-end offering is the multi-node INVICTA, with the INFINITY variant having up to 30 nodes and 360TB of flash. This should provide more than 4 million IOPS with a 40GB/sec bandwidth. It is set to ship later in June.

By developing the WT-1100 for the entry-level mamrket, Whiptail is positioning itself below the market position occupied by Pure Storage and Violin Memory. That could, in turn, put other flash array vendors such as Nimbus Data under pricing pressure.

US-based B2B distie CDW will be a US channel for the WT-1100, alongside Whiptail's other arrays, and availability is set for the third quarter.

A 12TB ACCELA is listed at $243,000; that's $20,250/TB. On that basis, a 4TB WT-1100 could cost $81,000: El Reg feels this would be far too high for many branch office/SME customers. For comparison, a 16TB 4-disk WD Sentinel 1U rackmount storage server is listed at $2,349 retail. But that only comes with a measly dual Atom processor combo running the show.

Whiptail says the WT-1100 starting price is under $20,000. For comparison, ten per cent of the theoretical equivalent 4TB ACCELA price would be $19,600. ®

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