Storewiz Squeezes Data

Storewiz hopes to make a splash in the data storage market with a unique compression approach.

The company claims a data compression ratio of as much as 5:1 for its third generation of data compression appliances launched this week, and it says it can deliver those rates without affecting the performance of applications connected to the network.

The company says its approach — primary data compression — is unique and sets it apart from virtual tape (VTL) and de-duplication vendors focused on backup.

“The Storewiz approach is an alternative to de-duping and may have more widespread and instant appeal, since most of the de-dupers are tuned and designed for ingesting large backup streams as opposed to working with everyday files,” said Greg Schulz, founder and senior analyst at StorageIO.

Schulz likened the Storewiz approach to “putting ‘zip’ in-line and in front of your NAS files for everyday use. The Storewiz approach is to compact everything (unless you tell it what to filter and exclude), so you get immediate benefit. … Over time, I would expect more compaction capability to be added to storage systems and devices, network switches and servers. … There is a very rapid ROI case that can be had with the Storewiz approach.”

The technology also may be an easier sell with storage users, who are already familiar with compression technology, says Schulz.

“No other vendor has even approached the sophisticated abilities of our first generation of data compression appliances, and yet here we are launching our third,” boasts Storewiz CEO Gal Naor. “Our unique approach to real-time compression, through the offloading and centralization of data in a powerful and dedicated appliance such as our STN-6000, provides users with an unbeatable business solution that enables them to maximize current and future storage investments while safeguarding their business-critical information with no performance degradation.”

Storwiz’s STN-6300 is aimed at departments and remote offices, distributed applications and archiving and compliance, while the STN-6500 is for enterprise business and technical applications. The STN-6300 costs $22,000, and the STN-6500 $42,000.

Storewiz says its technology lets users store on average three times more data with no performance degradation. The new STN-6000 requires no workflow changes, software agents, drivers or configuration changes, the company says, and supports both file- and block-level data compression for all tiers of storage and applications, including OLTP databases.

By compressing data at rest, Storewiz says organizations retain fast access to files and databases while saving capital, operation and maintenance costs without altering vendor storage functionality. With no resident file system, Storewiz appliances are interchangeable without loss of data.

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