Flash storage upstart SolidFire slurps $82m, intros Mini-Me arrays

Solidfire has introduced two smaller arrays that, over time, will replace their existing entry-level and mid-range offering. It's also picked up an extra $82m of funding. The SF2405 and 4805 are two new products with smaller capacities and a lower starting price point so that customers can scale their storage at a more …

[Archaon]

Red paint makes Dell go faster?

"They use the same 1U, 10-drive bay enclosure as the existing models."

Dell Poweredge R620 servers, from the looks of those chassis. Bonus points for the red paint though.

Another day, another software company putting their own custom breed of Linux on someone elses' commodity tin and hoping to flog it at a high profit margin.

Don't get me wrong - it's not an inherently bad thing - but wake me up when it's over.

[AndrewDH]

Re: Red paint makes Dell go faster?

Some are some arn't. Violin, IBM, HDS, 3Par and Skyeraare engineered systems which may use x86 based controllers. Pure, EMC, Cisco etc are Generic x86 devices racked and stacked with some SSD's and their software. NetApp who knows.

[Anonymous Coward]

A very good company's offerings just got better

A good company with excellent management. In the end their focus is not only on hardware but on storage/software/cloud features like QoS, dedup, compression, as well as an ability to cluster and aggregate their storage in 1RU units that can go beyond 100 units and offer a nice cloud/enterprise solution. They are one of a handful of really well balanced companies that really do offer differentiation - witness the large number of wins they have had within the cloud provider space. This is very different from some companies (Violin Memory comes to mind) that over-focused only on hardware at the expense of software/storage features and that are today paying the price with completely lackluster and disconnected strategies. It's not an accident that companies like large e-commerce companies have bought their units in large numbers or that large numbers of cloud providers use them.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: A very good company's offerings just got better

Anonymous Coward or Anonymous creepy bum lick?!?

Solidfire are one of a gaggle who have operated reasonably well in a niche sector (they are mostly all ex 3PAR so no surprise there) but will find it difficult to break into the more mainstream market. QoS is great but it's not really a big seller with the mainstream market who tend to see flash as a way of avoiding having to worry about QoS!