MinIO, the only pure-play exascale object store for AI data, has launched a new line of AIStor-powered pod solutions to deliver solutions designed for private cloud modernization. It is available exclusively through Supermicro out of the gate, and will be followed up shortly with Dell. Distribution is available exclusively through Arrow. MinIO plans to continue unveiling more AIStor-powered pods that leverage additional storage vendor hardware in the future.
“Appliance-based solutions, especially ‘unified’ approaches which bolt-on an object gateway onto a legacy file/block backend, tightly couple hardware and software together, so you’re locked into those respective vendors, which makes long-term flexibility difficult,” said Mahesh Patel, Chief Business Officer at MinIO. “AIStor pods deliver the simplicity of the appliance purchasing model paired with full cloud-operating model flexibility, enabling customers to easily and cost-effectively consolidate all of their data onto a modern, AI-ready private cloud infrastructure.”
MinIO combines standardized, certified hardware and highly optimized object store software into a hardened single-node SKU, streamlining procurement of storage pods with a pre-integrated, pre-configured, and ready-to-deploy solution. MinIO will announce a new line of AIStor-powered pod solutions, consisting of pre-integrated AIStor software on standardized/certified hardware, to simplify purchasing and deployment of private cloud AI infrastructure.
“MinIO, an S3 compatible exascale object store, has been around for a while,” Patel said. “Many of the Fortune 500 use us globally. We have software-defined storage customers, because when you tightly couple software and hardware, you create lock in. For us, the hardware is the commodity portion and the software is the brains.”
The first AIStor-powered pod solutions will pre-integrate Supermicro hardware, with starter four-node pods delivering ~1.1 PiB of usable capacity. Each pod consists of multiple hardened, certified AIStor on Supermicro Hyper 1U servers engineered for performance and reliability. Enterprises can now confidently purchase, quickly deploy, and effortlessly scale AIStor pods via hardened Supermicro nodes, eliminating the need for separate hardware and software negotiations, avoiding lock-in, and reducing operational risk. Every pod includes first-call 24x7x365 direct-to-engineer AIStor support through MinIO SUBNET. MinIO will engage the respective hardware provider as necessary to provide support.
The Hyper 1U servers were chosen because they were more about performance than capacity.
“While the 1U is more about performance, the 2U is more capacity,” Patel commented. “That’s the tradeoff.”
MinIO is pairing the familiarity and convenience of appliance-oriented purchasing with the power and flexibility of the cloud operating model, albeit the private cloud.
“We are cloud-native letting S3 storage be deployed in the cloud or on the edge, and offering the ability to deploy a pod that can scale up and out,” Patel noted. “It is quick economics – easy to deploy and to secure. The program allows an easy turnkey solution, with a turnkey appliance. It is lucrative for our customers, but also our resellers.”
Patel said that Supermicro was an excellent place to start.
“It is widely adopted and easy to deploy,” he indicated. “We have also had a long standing motion with them which we will add to over time. Many customers deploy on Supermicro with MinIO.”
Delivered through Arrow Electronics, the solutions integrate exascale AIStor software with hardware from Supermicro and others to simplify private cloud AI infrastructure.
“Our software is what is distinct with this,” Patel noted. “Supermicro and Dell are the easy button to deploy, rack and stack and scale.”
Patel said that there are plans to go beyond Supermicro, which include Dell.
“It is still early right now to determine that,” he indicated. “We are starting with Supermicro. Dell is the followup, but we have to do some product certification. Supermicro is the one that we are going to with customers right now, and they will be our launch partners for the foreseeable future. Dell is likely to come in soon after that. It all comes down to customer choice. We have had an existing relationship with Dell for many years, and many customers love Dell performance. They are Dell shops, so we work with them.”
Arrow will take all this to market.
“Arrow is a new partnership for us, which we formed earlier this year, which tends to serve large companies,” Patel said. “We have a strong relationship with them, where they can pre-integrate before it leaves the factory. Before the Arrow relationship was formed, we were limited because we have an open source motion. Now we have them internationally. Arrow support will be the one-stop-shop to connect customers to the OEM vendor’s support organization. In the near term, we are not using their ECS arm which is more distribution.
“If we find that we need to add there, we will,” he indicated.
“We started launching our channel program in July,” Patel said. “We are more on the smaller subset, with fewer than 20 partners globally. Many are focused on new age workloads, although large national partners like Trace3 have been the focus as well as integrators. Our focus is on finding the right partners and making them succeed.”
“Supermicro’s extensive portfolio of storage optimized servers is a great fit for MinIO’s AIStor data management solution,” said Michael McNerney, senior vice president of Marketing and Network Security, Supermicro. “Customers want easy-to-deploy solutions and the pre-integrated and pre-validated AIStor on Supermicro servers provides that simplified deployment experience and can accelerate- time-to-value for customers.”
“Enterprises are quickly discovering that successful AI initiatives depend as much on data infrastructure as on algorithms and GPUs,” said Steve McDowell, Chief Analyst at NAND Research. “Managing AI-scale data requires not just performance, but procurement simplicity and predictable economics. Pre-integrated pod solutions like these from MinIO align with the broader industry shift of bringing hyperscaler-style efficiency and scale into enterprise private clouds. This gives organizations a clearer path to align infrastructure investments with AI-driven business priorities.”