SanDisk's InfiniFlash looks in its closet, pulls out a Red Hat to wear

SanDisk and Red Hat have formed an alliance: the crimson cranial-covering company’s Ceph Storage software will be offered as the preferred Ceph software by SanDisk for its InfiniFlash box.

SanDisk's year-old InfiniFlash all-flash array box offers 512TB of capacity in a 3U box with the hardware powered by Ubuntu Linux, and presented as a JBOF: just a bunch of flash. At launch it could run Ceph’s open-source, unified, scale-out block, object and file system, or SanDisk’s ION Accelerator software stack for block storage alone.

Since its launch it has gathered additional software and OEM support:

• Tegile’s Intelliflash HD product is based ion it.
• Nexenta has provided NexentaStor storage software support.
• Enterprise and cloud storage supplier CloudBytes OEMs the box.
• White box server supplier Quanta combines InfiniFlash product with its own servers.
• IBM and SAnDisk are supporting Spectrum Scale on InfiniFlash.

So what does this Red Hat-SanDisk deal add that’s new, as Ceph has been available on InfiniFlash for a year already? The two call it a strategic alliance. Ranga Rangachari, storage veep at Red Hat, said: “SanDisk’s InfiniFlash System and Red Hat Ceph Storage have been tested, optimised, and certified together for optimal stability and performance.”

That appears to be it, as there is no mention of any joint go-to-market activities, such as a roadshow or any seminars. Red Hat isn’t going to stop supporting Ceph on other hardware and SanDisk isn’t going to stop supporting other software on InfiniFlash. This is just a run-of-the-mill software certification on InfiniFlash. Nothing else to see here. Move on. ®