Argo Technologie SA, an industry innovator in multi-petabyte data storage solutions, has formally launched a range of appliances utilising its Argo Ethernet Storage Fabric to deliver scale-out storage solutions aimed at Petascale environments.
The newly launched products include Perseus, a feature-rich NAS appliance based on the Zettabyte filesystem (ZFS) with a flexible choice of SSD and cache options. The new Argus Scale-out Ethernet Block Storage Shelf communicates with the Perseus NAS appliance across the high speed Argo Ethernet Storage Fabric and offers a flexible choice of up to 36, 72 or 90 slots for SSD or NL-SAS drives with 10 or 40GigE connectivity. The ultra high density design allows a 5.7Pb of storage including switches to be deployed in just 1 rack (36U) while consuming just 9.5Kw. The Argo Ethernet Storage Fabric (AESF) at the heart of each appliance is capable of scaling performance and capacity to support multiple Petabyte storage pools through its parallel storage architecture. Originally based on ATA over Ethernet protocol, AESF has been further developed to deliver a set of enhanced features designed to meet the needs of Petascale use cases while benefiting from enhanced performance with very low latency. The use of the industry standard ZFS file system along with deep protocols support including NFS, CIFS and optionally iSCSI provides seamless integration for both file and block based applications.
To ensure highest levels of resiliency, Argo Technologie appliances use a Redundant Array of Independent Nodes (RAIN) architecture that can tolerate the unlikely event of multiple drive and even entire storage shelf failures and still maintain data integrity.
The Swiss headquartered company was founded by Oleg Zelentsov, a serial entrepreneur and owner of a number of successful European technology businesses. “Argo Technologie is built from day one to be a solid and stable business that by avoiding the Silicon Valley VC route has instead built a company that from private funding has reached modest profitability in just 12 months,” explains Zelentsov. “In relative stealth mode, we have responded to RFPs, won deals and implemented major systems that we are now in the process of creating references to highlight the suitability of our technology for Petascale applications within the areas of security and video surveillance, media and entertainment, healthcare and larger service providers.”
One such customer is the Ministry of Transport in Russia that has deployed Argo appliances to deliver 16 Petabytes of storage for its Plato project to create a road toll charging system spanning 52000km of roadways.
The Argo Technologie executive team includes developers and managers that have previously held senior roles at EqualLogic, Rackable Systems and Coraid. As Denis Nuja, CTO for Argo Technologie explains, “Our Argo Ethernet Storage Fabric is designed from the ground up to solve the needs of large scale storage deployments that require the capacity, performance and the simplicity that are necessary to achieve the highest levels of reliability. The design of the AESF allows us to easily add new technologies such as NVMe and Ethernet connected HDD to the mix to gain instant performance, latency and capacity improvements.”
Argo Technologie has setup a full scale technical evaluation lab in Z?rich, Switzerland which includes a Petabyte cluster utilising Perseus and Argus appliances for customer solution and use case testing. “By developing our own internal fabric along with commodity hardware from our partners, we are able to deliver a storage architecture that is incredibly cost effective and support it with a dedicated international team from our headquarters in Switzerland,” adds Nuja.
Argo is currently signing up key channel partners in Europe and working closely with its existing customers to extend its technology with enhanced functionality. “We have learnt from our time within the storage industry that great technology is not enough,” says Stephen Hanna, Sales Director for Argo Technologie. “In today’s storage market customers’ needs change rapidly which is why we have created Argo Technologie with a highly defined focus on only larger customers. We are privately held and profitable with zero financial investment from Venture Capital companies with an aim to serve a specific core customer set in a more effective and consistent manner than the typical start-up approach that focuses on growth ahead of longer term viability.”
