ACADEMIA

Amplidata announced AmpliStor XT, the latest version of its system software featuring major enhancements in performance and functionality for handling Big Unstructured Data in media, online, scientific and live archive applications. This major new release empowers its users with eXtreme Throughput (XT) and a wide set of enhancements for:

-- Performance: dramatic speedups in throughput plus new object caching features. The nearly linear scaling of throughput makes AmpliStor XT the perfect complement to Big Unstructured Data applications.

-- Streamlined application development: API enhancements for http/REST and .Net applications speed up development and provide enhanced security for online applications

-- Ease of management: with an improved GUI for monitoring and reporting, SNMP support to allow alerting and browsing in common frameworks, and automated installation of Petabyte scale and beyond deployments.

With this latest version, a single AmpliStor system can be scaled across multiple racks to provide up to 10’s of Gigabytes per second of I/O, with near linear scaling of throughput as the system grows. Each individual AmpliStor Controller delivers up to 750 Megabytes per second of aggregate throughput, enabling a single system rack with multiple controllers to provide multi-gigabytes per second of throughput. This throughput is essential for many of today’s mission-critical applications in media and entertainment, finance and medical industries. Enhancements to Amplidata’s patent-pending BitSpread Erasure Coding software, the industry’s first rateless erasure coding, now allows AmpliStor to drive 10 Gigabit Ethernet network interfaces to full capacity per storage controller.

AmpliStor XT incorporates a new object caching capability that allows AmpliStor controllers to be configured with variable sized object caches in either solid state (SSD) or hard-drive (HDD) based caches. The capability further optimizes the performance of AmpliStor for applications where objects are accessed repeatedly, or for geographically-spread deployments where objects are retrieved over higher-latency (WAN) based networks. This avoids repeated transfers of objects and allows immediate access once objects have been cached in the controllers.

"Amplidata's technology is unique: rateless erasure coding ensures extreme data durability and their high-performance codec gives the speed needed to handle Big Data,” said Robin Harris, chief analyst at StorageMojo.com. “Combined with the innate scalability of object storage, Amplidata brings welcome capabilities to live archive applications managing huge capacities."

Rapid application development and integration is critical to Big Data deployments. AmpliStor XT provides numerous enhancements to streamline these applications.

-- The AmpliStor http/REST interface now supports extensible metadata, to enable applications to store and manage custom key/value pairs to augment object payloads.

-- To better support online and cloud-based applications, a new authentication capability is enabled through http/REST.

-- For customers developing applications in Microsoft environments, AmpliStor XT provides a native .Net SDK to AmpliStor storage services, enabling complete development in the .Net framework.

In addition, AmpliStor XT includes a major set of management upgrades that further augments the AmpliStor value proposition of enabling very low operating costs.

-- To maximize the productivity of administrators, enhancements to the AmpliStor GUI include detailed performance monitoring, trending and graphing capabilities.

-- Management of large system deployments is streamlined through installation and upgrade capabilities, allowing multiple storage nodes or racks to be added in parallel.

-- The system supports full SNMP alerts and traps, plus browsing of system parameters through an SNMP MiB.

-- It also offers improved management of the system platform, including advanced disk management and mixed density storage pools.

“Our AmpliStor XT software directly addresses customer requirements for very fast ingest of and access to Big Data, and improved manageability at large scale,” said Wim De Wispelaere, CEO of Amplidata. “Customers and partners are now AmpliStor-enabling their applications for use cases that support both online and live archives applications including those dealing with the eXtreme Throughput required for media and scientific payloads.”