Recently, Beijing Futong Dongfang Technology Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as: Futong Dongfang) has officially reached a strategic cooperation agreement with Zadra Storage. According to the agreement, Futong Dongfang becomes the sole agent of Zadra Storage in China and a cooperative developer of Software-Defined Storage (SDS). The two parties will engage in in-depth collaboration in the field of software-defined storage to jointly develop the domestic enterprise-level storage market, bringing flexible, efficient, low-cost, and easily scalable software-defined storage applications to domestic enterprise customers.
Mr. Chen Jian, Chairman of Futong Dongfang, stated at the signing: "Futong and the entrepreneurs of Zadra Storage have had a pleasant cooperation experience for more than ten years. There is a broad space for cooperation between the two parties in the new type of enterprise-level storage in the future, and I believe that the close cooperation between the two parties can yield fruitful results." Mr. Jin Wei, CTO of Futong Dongfang, said: "Zadara Storage is a globally leading company in enterprise-level storage as a service. Combined with Futong's local technology and services, we can definitely promote and popularize storage as a service in China." Zou Jun, General Manager of the Enterprise Cloud Computing Business Division of Futong Dongfang, also expressed: "The transformation of the current storage architecture has just begun, and the protection of corporate data assets faces significant technical challenges. The cooperation between Futong Dongfang and Zadra Storage can help enterprise customers solve issues related to data access, data storage, and data security in the era of cloud and big data."
Software-defined storage is one of the hottest technology concepts today, originally extending from the concepts of software-defined networking and software-defined data centers to the storage domain. After several years of development, it is now increasingly recognized by the industry. Software-defined storage abstracts the control logic of storage from hardware and implements functions such as volume management, RAID, snapshots, replication, and data protection through software. It can also be managed and scaled freely through software. With the low-cost x86 architecture, software-defined storage achieves the same functionality and similar performance as expensive traditional SAN and NAS storage devices, with higher flexibility and better scalability.
In China, software-defined storage is still in its infancy and has gained some recognition in the industry, but it is not yet mature. There is a lack of consensus among various vendors on how to implement software-defined storage, which can be said to be in its initial stage in the country. At this juncture, the in-depth cooperation between Futong Dongfang and Zadra Storage in the field of software-defined storage is timely. The two parties will leverage their respective advantageous resources and strengths to jointly develop the domestic software-defined storage industry. In addition to introducing Zadra Storage's product series to China, they are also committed to collaborative research and development, and together they will launch a new generation of software-defined storage products with Server SAN and software-defined capabilities—Futong SDS.
ZadaraStorage was founded by Mr. Nelson Nahum, the former CTO of the well-known chip and storage company LSI. Nelson Nahum's Israeli team had previously developed the storage virtualization product SVM, which was later acquired by NetApp for $370 million when LSI's external storage division was merged. Some members of ZadraStorage's team also participated in the startup XtremIO, which was subsequently acquired by EMC for $430 million. Today, ZadraStorage is dedicated to the operation of enterprise storage as a service and has been operating in North America, Australia, Japan, and Europe for three years, with the ability to deploy this service in public clouds, private clouds, and hybrid clouds. The main market is currently in North America, where it is the largest storage operations partner of Amazon AWS and Microsoft Azure in the public cloud.
Futong Dongfang is a leading domestic supplier of enterprise-level IT solutions, focusing on customized IT infrastructure construction, operations and maintenance, and data solutions.
Futong Dongfang and Zadra Storage have already had their first successful implementation in China, which is applied in the VDI field. The success of a VDI environment depends on user experience. The worst experience is when the system is unusable, and a "boot storm" is such a killer. A "boot storm" occurs when a large group of users start their systems and load applications simultaneously, and the resulting input/output volume can quickly paralyze a storage array, preventing all terminals from starting up. This is actually a problem of how a storage system deals with peak and average traffic. Traditional storage designs are often only for average traffic and cannot take into account peak traffic at the same time. Currently, the popular use of all-flash storage can solve peak traffic well but at a significantly increased cost. Moreover, there is limited flexibility in capacity expansion.
Futong Dongfang and Zadra Storage have partnered to launch the Futida SDS storage product, which utilizes standard industrial X86 server hardware and intelligent software to centrally manage CPU, memory, and disk resources, providing these to users as a service. According to the business needs of users, it offers intelligent, flexible, and automated unified storage resources through virtual disk arrays. Each virtual disk array is equipped with SSD caching and regular mechanical SAS hard drives, along with enterprise-level high-availability suites featuring functions such as snapshots, cloning, and remote replication. This truly addresses the users' issues. Mr. Song Jiankun, who first used Futida SDS at Beijing Gongda Technology, said: "The 'Futida SDS' jointly launched by Futong Technology and Zadra Storage has the characteristics of a new generation of software-defined storage. It is a high-performance ServerSAN suitable for database and virtualization applications, helping enterprise customers solve key issues of data access and data storage in the transition to cloud architecture."
