NexGen Storage leads the SME pack

NexGen Storage (www.nexgenstorage.com), an innovator in mid-range storage array, continues to move quickly with several announcements in recent months. Met recently during the 15th IT Press Tour, NexGen introduced some interesting new features for its N5 hybrid flash array.
NexGen was spun-off from SanDisk a few months ago but took advantage of this period at Fusion-io then at SanDisk to double the R&D team, introduce 3 major software release and grow the installed base with several hundreds of customers. Wow.
Before touching the new capabilities, let me summarize briefly what NexGen offers. The vendor designs, builds and sells through channels hybrid disk array based on PCIe Flash and HDDs for the SMB/SME market. NexGen N5 arrays exist in 4 configurations as the following table describes.

One of the top features that defines NexGen is the QoS function, very granular, that dynamically maintain speed, reduce latency and give priority to some workloads. In fact, the idea is to provide a mechanism to efficiently place data on storage based on their value and of course linked to applications' needs. And to protect these arrays, snapshot and replication can be scheduled to strengthen the data storage farm.
With the new ioControl 3.5, NexGen introduces a new capability, the VM-level QoS designed for vSphere Virtual Volumes and PCIe Flash. the New QoS also eliminates the use of Storage vMotion. A new management console is also unveiled - QoS Manager - integrated to VMware vSphere GUI as a plug-in. The new QoS model is clearly a key feature in a VM environment. At the same time, the software is ready for the next wave with the introduction and support of NVMe instead of SAS/SATA interface.

NexGen is back with a clear and comprehensive features set, we'll see during VMworld some demos about these new capabilities.