CTC Signs Distribution Agreement with SolidFire

ITOCHU Techno-Solutions Corporation (headquartered in Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo; Satoshi Kikuchi, President& CEO; hereinafter “CTC”) has signed a distribution agreement with SolidFire, Inc. (headquartered in Boulder, Colorado, United States; founder and CEO: Dave Wright; hereinafter “SolidFire”), which offers all-flash storage systems that contribute to the management of large volumes of data through the high-speed reading and writing of data. CTC today commences the supply of SolidFire's SF series all-flash storage systems. CTC will provide these systems with a central focus on companies, cloud service operators and financial institutions that handle large-scale data, and will aim to achieve sales of 500 million yen over the next three years including maintenance support.

In the case of both cloud services provided by cloud service operators and the private clouds utilized internally within companies, multitenant clouds that share access to resources such as hardware, software and databases between multiple enterprises or corporate divisions are becoming more widespread. Due to the fact that, in multitenant architectures, there are concentrated accesses to storage by multiple servers that are integrated into one system, and high load-intensity data processing on one virtual server also effects the processing of other virtual servers, the performance of storage is one factor that can contribute to the degradation of overall system performance.

SolidFire's SF series is a storage system that handles use on multitenant architectures by restricting the volume of data input/output (I/O) for each tenant/user division and application, and managing the level of performance required in each case. Because it enables the load on storage and the volume of usage to be managed, in addition to improved performance stability, it also makes it easier to carry out pre-installation sizing and forecasting of future expansions. It also contributes to improving the quality of cloud services provided by cloud service operators, through features such as its use of flash memory, which achieves high-speed reading and writing, and scale-out functionality that straddles enclosures according to status of usage.
CTC will utilize the know-how that it has cultivated so far in its provision of cloud services and the building of large-scale private clouds that use virtualization technologies to offer a total service, from sales of the SF series to system building and maintenance support. The SF series also works in conjunction with the OpenStack cloud OS, and CTC will offer flexible, automated system infrastructure in combination with the precursory efforts relating to OpenStack that are already underway at CTC.

• Sets QoS^*1 to match the demands of each tenant & user division:
  Manages performance and capacity according to each volume, tenant/user division and application.
• Enables scale-out according to status of usage:
  Scale-out of performance and capacity is possible simply by adding additional storage nodes. Scaling down is also simple and easy, and a single storage system can handle between a minimum of 4 nodes (35 TB, 200K IOPS^*2) and a maximum of 100 nodes (3.4 PB, 7.5M IOPS).
• Works in conjunction with OpenStack to improve operational management on cloud platforms:
  The SF series works in conjunction with OpenStack cloud infrastructure software, achieving operation through SolidFire's REST-based API (Application Programming Interface) from operational management tools on the OpenStack platform.