Japan's SoftBank has adopted the Western Digital's SanDisk InfiniFlash all-flash storage platform for its software-defined storage solution to save on capital expenses and operational costs in the data center.
SoftBank has built a new software-defined, multi-petabyte in-house system using the SanDisk InfiniFlash platform as its core storage engine for real-time data transaction applications, enabling the installation of software in general-purpose servers. Previously, SoftBank was running an in-house traditional storage system combining hard disk drives (HDD) and solid state drives (SSD) for some of its applications.
In addition to high-speed I/O capability, the solution delivers higher density compared to traditional flash-based platforms, which means it does not need to take as much floor space in data centers as in the past, while still being able to scale processing from a few petabytes to hundreds of petabytes of data.
The SanDisk InfiniFlash platform offers up to 512TB of recording density in one 3-rack-unit (3U) platform and delivers both the economics of HDD-based storage and performance of flash memory storage to support the needs of mid- to massive-scale environments. The SanDisk InfiniFlash platform can be connected to up to eight servers, allowing computing and storage to be added separately while also delivering the reliability and high performance of flash.
Yasuyuki Kato, director, System Infrastructure, IT System Infrastructure, SoftBank
We have then decided to implement the SanDisk InfiniFlash platform. This is the first super-large-capacity flash storage platform that the SanDisk brand launched for data centers, based on its rich experience and knowhow in flash development and production.
Gary Lyng, Senior Director of Marketing for Western Digital’s Data Center Systems Business Unit
While devices begin to feature artificial intelligence and we are fully entering the connected era of IoT, it is becoming essential to leverage the huge volume of data that is generated at a higher scale than ever.
