Infinidat Presents at AI Data Infrastructure Field Day 1

Revolutionizing Enterprise Storage with High Performance and Unmatched Customer Support from Infinidat

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Infinidat, a company founded in 2011 with deep roots in enterprise storage, has established itself as a critical player in the IT storage infrastructure for some of the world’s largest companies. The company’s founder, who previously created EMC Symmetrix and sold XIV to IBM, has leveraged this extensive experience to build Infinidat into a provider of high-performance, high-availability storage solutions. These solutions are designed to handle mission-critical applications and workloads, including databases, ERP systems, and virtual infrastructures. Recently, Infinidat has also expanded its focus to support critical AI workloads, such as Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG), reflecting the evolving needs of modern enterprises.

Infinidat’s approach to the market is somewhat unique, as it traditionally sold full rack-scale systems but is now offering more flexible consumption options. This flexibility allows customers to integrate Infinidat’s solutions seamlessly into their existing infrastructure without significant changes. The company’s customer base primarily consists of large enterprises, with an average customer managing 17 petabytes of storage. Infinidat’s systems are known for their scalability, capable of handling up to 17 petabytes of effective data, and are designed to provide enterprise-caliber performance, 100% availability resilience, and industry-leading cyber resilience through their InfiniSafe technology.

One of the standout features of Infinidat’s offerings is their “white glove” customer service, which includes comprehensive support from the initial purchase through the entire lifecycle of the product at no additional cost. This service model has flipped the traditional support paradigm on its head, providing customers with technical advisors and eliminating the need for additional support tiers or add-ons. Infinidat’s solutions also contribute to data center consolidation, offering greener, more efficient storage options that reduce floor space, power, cooling, and operational costs. The company’s recent product developments, including the AI-driven Infiniverse platform and the cloud editions of their Fuse OS operating system, further demonstrate their commitment to innovation and addressing the evolving needs of enterprise customers, particularly in the realm of cybersecurity and cyber attack prevention.

Personnel: Bill Basinas

Infinidat Products – InfiniBox G4 and InfiniBox SSA

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Infinidat’s presentation at AI Data Infrastructure Field Day 1, led by Bill Basinas, Sr. Director of Product Marketing, focused on their latest storage solutions, the InfiniBox G4 and InfiniBox SSA. Basinas highlighted the unique software-defined architecture of Infinidat’s products, which leverage commodity hardware components to deliver high performance and resilience. The core of their technology, InfuseOS, provides triple redundancy and integrates features like neural cache, which uses a large shared pool of DRAM memory to ensure high performance and cache hit rates. This architecture allows Infinidat to guarantee 100% availability and high performance, making their solutions suitable for mission-critical applications and workloads, including AI tasks like Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG).

The presentation also detailed the hardware advancements in the G4 series, which transitioned from Intel to AMD EPYC CPUs, resulting in a 31% increase in core count and a 20% improvement in power efficiency. This shift to PCIe Gen 5 and DDR5 DRAM further enhanced the system’s performance. Infinidat’s approach to scalability was also discussed, with the introduction of smaller configurations like the 1400T series, designed for remote data centers and edge deployments. These systems maintain the same enterprise-class architecture and performance, allowing for seamless, non-disruptive scaling. Additionally, Infinidat continues to offer hybrid storage solutions, which are particularly popular for large-scale backup environments.

Infinidat’s InfiniVerse platform was another key topic, providing extensive telemetry and predictive analytics to help customers manage their storage environments. InfiniVerse leverages AI and machine learning to offer insights into storage usage, power consumption, and carbon footprint, aligning with modern ESG goals. The platform supports Infinidat’s white-glove customer service, where technical advisors work closely with clients to optimize their storage infrastructure. The presentation concluded with a discussion on Infinidat’s future plans, including the Mobius controller upgrade program, which promises seamless, in-place upgrades without disrupting system availability, further emphasizing Infinidat’s commitment to innovation and customer satisfaction.

Personnel: Bill Basinas

Infinidat InfuzeOS for Hybrid Multi Cloud

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Infinidat’s InfuzeOS is a versatile operating system designed to support both on-premises and hybrid multi-cloud environments. Initially developed for on-premises solutions, InfuzeOS has been extended to work seamlessly with major cloud providers like AWS and Microsoft Azure. This extension allows customers to experience the same ease of use and robust functionality in the cloud as they do with their on-premises systems. InfuzeOS retains all its core features, including neural cache, InfiniRAID, InfiniSafe, and InfiniOps, ensuring consistent performance and management across different environments. The system supports both block and file storage, making it adaptable to various workload needs.

InfiniRAID, a key component of Infinidat’s technology, is a software-based RAID architecture that provides exceptional resilience and performance. Unlike traditional RAID systems that can be vulnerable to multiple drive failures, InfiniRAID can handle dozens of device failures without compromising system operations. This high level of resilience is achieved through a patented approach that manages RAID at the software layer, allowing for efficient use of all available devices. This capability is particularly beneficial for enterprise environments where data integrity and uptime are critical. InfiniRAID’s design also simplifies maintenance, as customers can replace failed drives without immediate technical intervention, thanks to the system’s hot-pluggable drives and proactive monitoring.

InfiniSafe, another integral feature, focuses on cyber resilience, providing robust protection against data breaches and cyber threats. While the cloud implementations of InfuzeOS do not offer the same level of hardware control and guarantees as on-premises solutions, they still deliver significant benefits. The cloud version currently operates on a single compute instance, with plans to evolve towards multi-node configurations to better support complex workloads. Despite these differences, the cloud implementation maintains the same software functionality, including compression and support for Ethernet-based protocols. This makes InfuzeOS a flexible and powerful solution for various use cases, from functional test development to backup and replication targets, and increasingly, AI workloads.

Personnel: Bill Basinas

AI Workloads and Infinidat

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Infinidat’s presentation at AI Data Infrastructure Field Day 1, led by Bill Basinas, focused on the company’s strategic positioning within the AI infrastructure market. Basinas emphasized that Infinidat has been closely monitoring the AI landscape for over a year to identify where their enterprise storage solutions can best serve AI workloads. He acknowledged the rapid growth and evolving nature of the AI market, particularly in generative AI (Gen AI) and its associated learning models. Infinidat aims to provide robust storage solutions that enhance the accuracy of AI-generated results, especially through their focus on Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG). This approach is designed to mitigate issues like data inaccuracies and hallucinations in AI outputs by leveraging Infinidat’s existing data center capabilities.

Basinas highlighted that Infinidat’s strength lies in its ability to support mission-critical applications and workloads, including databases, ERP systems, and virtual infrastructures. The company is now extending this expertise to AI workloads by ensuring high performance and reliability. Infinidat’s InfiniSafe technology offers industry-leading cyber resilience, and their “white glove” customer service ensures a seamless integration of their storage solutions into existing infrastructures. The company is not currently involved in data classification or governance but focuses on providing the underlying storage infrastructure that supports AI applications. This strategic choice allows Infinidat to concentrate on their core competencies while potentially partnering with other vendors for data management and security.

Infinidat’s approach to AI infrastructure is pragmatic and customer-centric. They are working closely with clients to understand their needs and are developing workflows and reference architectures to facilitate the deployment of RAG-based infrastructures. The company is also exploring the integration of vector databases and other advanced data management technologies to further enhance their AI capabilities. While Infinidat is not yet offering object storage natively, they are actively working on it and have partnerships with companies like MinIO and Hammerspace to provide interim solutions. Overall, Infinidat aims to leverage its existing infrastructure to support AI workloads effectively, offering a cost-effective and scalable solution for enterprises venturing into AI.

Personnel: Bill Basinas

Next Gen Data Protection and Recovery with Infinidat

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Infinidat’s presentation on next-generation data protection and recovery emphasizes the critical need for robust cyber-focused strategies to safeguard corporate infrastructure and critical data assets. Bill Basinas, the Senior Director of Product Marketing, highlights the importance of moving beyond traditional backup and recovery methods to a more proactive approach that prioritizes business recovery. Infinidat’s solutions are designed to protect data efficiently and ensure its availability, leveraging advanced technologies like immutable snapshots and automated cyber protection to provide a resilient and secure storage environment.

The core of Infinidat’s approach lies in its InfiniSafe technology, which offers immutable snapshots, logical air gapping, and instant recovery capabilities. These features ensure that data remains protected and can be quickly restored in the event of a cyber attack. The immutable snapshots are particularly crucial as they cannot be altered or deleted until their expiration, providing a reliable safeguard against data tampering. Additionally, InfiniSafe’s automated cyber protection (ACP) integrates seamlessly with existing security infrastructures, enabling real-time responses to potential threats and ensuring that data is continuously validated and verified.

Infinidat also collaborates with Index Engines to enhance its cyber detection capabilities. This partnership allows Infinidat to offer advanced content-level scanning and pattern matching to detect anomalies and potential threats with high accuracy. The integration of these technologies ensures that any compromised data is quickly identified and isolated, minimizing the impact of cyber attacks. By focusing on recovery first and ensuring that validated data is readily available, Infinidat provides a comprehensive solution that addresses the evolving challenges of data protection in today’s cyber-centric landscape.

Personnel: Bill Basinas