Kaminario K2 storage system
Kaminario K2 storage systemCourtesy

If you don't have one in your computer yet, you will soon. The Solid State Disk (SSD) is coming to a computer near you. They're more reliable than the standard mechanical disk drives that we're used to – and they're much, much faster. Just ask anyone with a Macbook Air, which comes with a built-in SSD.



The reason SSDs are more reliable than hard drives is that they have no moving parts, so there's less of a chance that the SSD will get damaged. Consumers love the idea of the SSD – it's much better than anything they've had access to until now – but enterprise users have indicated that they need more convincing. And Israel's Kaminario has just the thing for them: The K2 DRAM storage appliance, “which gives enterprise users all of the benefits of SSDs, overcoming the disadvantages that many customers find when using products from other vendors,” says  Gareth Taube, marketing vice-president for Kaminario.



Established in 2008, right at the onset of the SSD revolution, Kaminario builds and sells IT infrastructure systems for storage, applications, and backup. The K2 system uses DRAM for its storage, which Taube says is more reliable than flash memory (although the company has just come out with a version of the K2 which includes flash as well as DRAM, giving customers a full range of options).



But Kaminario is about far more than just the hardware. “In order to get the most out of an SSD system, you need an architecture - controlling software, resources, caches, etc. - that can make the most use of the hardware,” Taube says, and that is exactly what Kaminario has developed. The Kaminario K2 is based on the company's unique Scale-out Performance Storage Architecture (SPEAR), and was built from scratch specifically for SSD use – unlike just about all of the company's competitors, which are using 25 year old architecture (from the days of tape backups and SCSI drives!).



It's a scandal that Yokneam-based Kaminario, with its several dozen employees, is determined to put an end to. And the Kaminario system does – allowing the writing of dozens of gigabytes worth of data, the company says. The K2/SPEAR combo ensures that corporate users get the most for their money with SSDs – in terms of speed, safety, and reliability.



Recently, Kaminario closed its third round of financing, raising $15 million. "Since the K2’s introduction, we have seen the demand for our unique enterprise-class SSD storage grow continuously. We continue to attract customers of all sizes with one thing in common, an application where storage performance directly impacts their business," said Dani Golan, co-founder and CEO of Kaminario. "This new funding will allow us to expand our reach in the market and help more customers solve their application performance problems."