Coraid EtherDrive Storage Area Network System
The Coraid EtherDrive SAN System is a powerful combination of Coraid software and custom configured commodity hardware that provides flexible block-level storage solutions to your VMware, Linux, or Windows host servers. Each system is composed of:
- EtherDrive SRX media arrays
- EtherDrive host bus adaptors
- Optional EtherDrive VSX storage virtualizers
Install the EtherDrive Host Bus Adaptors (HBA) into your physical host. Our software, running standalone on the SRX media arrays, turns the commodity hardware into a powerful network storage appliance of unlimited disk storage. And it's all networked with simple, inexpensive, industry-standard Ethernet.
Media arrays can use SAS, SATA, or SSD and support the Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disk (RAID) organizations of 0, 1, 5, 6, and 10. Or use the disks as Just a Bunch of Disks (JBOD).
An optional EtherDrive VSX storage virtualizer provides extra features such as thin provisioning, snap-shots, and off-site backup.
All hardware comes custom-configured, along with a software subscription, and is sold practically at cost. Software subscriptions are priced affordably, about the same as you're paying for basic Windows Server, RHEL, or stripped down VMware.
Cloud-like Economics: Less Than $0.001 / GB / MO
The Coraid EtherDrive SAN system offers cloud-like economics without the variable bills. Instead of wildly unpredictable costs that follow cloud services, you lock in the low price tag upfront.
Coraid appliances allow you to expand unlimitedly by adding additional SRX media arrays, available in sixteen to thirty-six disk bays. The most economical per gigabyte SRX media array is the SRX3641, a 36 disk bay appliance with up to four 10GbE ports.
To make the system as affordable as possible, arrays are delivered without drives so you can save money by not only buying your preferred vendor, but you only buy them when you need more drive space. (We can also provide the disks if you prefer.)
That's the beauty of the Coraid EtherDrive SAN System: you only buy what you need, when you need it. If you need more hosts, just add more HBAs. If you run out of bays to put drives in, just add more SRX media arrays for less than $7000. Along with the added storage, each one gives your SAN system more network bandwidth, more processing power, more performance, and more redundancy.
Local Disk Easy
The inexpensive Coraid EtherDrive host bus adaptor (HBA) is the key to an easy-to-use storage area network. Each HBA houses a Coraid driver that transforms the HBA into a straight forward SAS host bus adaptor, so that SRX media array LUNs appear to your host server as SAS disks, just as if it was all Direct Attached Storage (DAS).
Only this DAS can be of unlimited scale, from a single array to hundreds of units.
This means if you’ve ever used a local drive, you already know almost all you need to know to use the Coraid EtherDrive SAN System. You’re practically an expert.
High Performance Through Long Experience
The Coraid EtherDrive SAN System is a performance workhorse. Each SRX media array can perform over 500,000 I/O operations per second (IOPS) and has the potential through-put of between one and two gigabytes per second.
Of course, your performance depends on your use case; accessing multiple locations on a device is usually the limiting factor of performance. But no other SAN system even remotely in the same price range will approach the performance of the Coraid EtherDrive SAN System.
Each SRX media array you add to your system boosts performance. A network of ten media arrays is ten times as fast as a network with one.
The reason Coraid can offer such performance at such a low price is because of the companies founder, Brantley Coile. His first introduction to computers was when hardware was massive, memory was minuscule, and developers had to be smart with their resources. With over 40 years of experience in embedded systems, he’s able to craft software that squeezes out every last IOP of even affordable hardware.
In today’s world, that means Coraid can do a great deal more with a great deal less, which saves you money.
World-Class Support
Coraid’s in-house support team is standing by to help you at every stage of the process. They offer consultations before you configure your system, and Coraid’s remote system logging allows them to keep your system healthy and high performing. You’ll know before anyone else when something like a disk dies. Standard, buisness-day support is inclyded in all software licenses with optional 24/7 support. To Find Out More To learn more, please share your contact information with us so we can have a conversation about your storage needs and how our Coraid EtherDrive storage systems can help you.
A Note From Brantley
I learned a lot as CTO and then as Chief Scientist of what I now call “VC Coraid.” Before going to California and getting venture funding, I founded and with an Athens Georgia team, built a $12M business out of Coraid EtherDrive SAN. Our driver was even in the generic Linux kernel. Later, we figured out a way to help VMware and Windows users.
But then I got Venture money. Like all of today’s VC funded tech companies, it placed revenue growth above all else. The result was a crash and burn for the California run version of the company.
Through a miracle, I wound up with the intellectual property again, complete with the brand name. Today, Coraid EtherDrive SAN System is back in Athens, Georgia, with a small team of dedicated folks helping new customers and supporting systems from as far back as 2007. No VC. No IPO. Not for sale.
How many other network storage firms are actively continuing to develop and improve products they sold a dozen years ago? We’re here to stay. If you’d like to learn more about our innovation-without-disruption, network-disk storage products, please fill out the Get Started form.
I’d love to help you get 10+ years out of a single Coraid storage product investment.
Brantley Coile
Founder | Coraid