The storage business model, reinvented for savings, simplicity and choice
ScrollOverview
With Gemini, customers purchase managed software on hardware that can now be bought direct from our manufacturer at cost. Gemini provides customers more commercial flexibility and new ways to save on software storage solutions - all while delivering unrivaled levels of scale-out deployment simplicity.
Buy Like A Hyperscaler, Deploy Like An Enterprise
Never Pay The Refresh Tax, Never Migrate Again
Your Risk-Free Path To Adopting Universal Storage
Our Team Is Now Your Team
How it Works
Not all customers operate at hyperscale computing levels, but Gemini provides everyone the same cost visibility and buying power that hyperscaler cloud providers use to build their clouds. Gemini disaggregates the hardware and software purchase process to provide all the advantages of a software-defined business model, with none of the integration and deployment complexity.
Gemini is designed to be more flexible than HW-constrained models — start with as little as 100TB for as little as one year.
Purchase and refresh equipment as frequently as needed, without worrying about the SW tax.
Universal Storage ships to you as a production-ready, integrated appliance. We handle all aspects of monitoring, maintenance and expansion.
Benefits
Since Gemini provides hardware lifecycle choices, the infinite storage lifecycle means you'll never need to migrate data again. Universal Storage’s asymmetric architecture makes it possible to non-disruptively scale from petabytes to exabytes across multiple generations of hardware as you build your always-on flash cloud.
The legacy infinite refresh cycle
The infinite storage lifecycle
Guarantee
removing the risk from modernizing your data
We're Investing For The Long-Term
Coordinate deployments to ensure nothing goes wrong. Co-Pilots are responsible for day-to-day health, capacity and performance monitoring and planning.
Co-Pilots ensure the prioritization of your critical feature requests and work with early-access customers to provide advanced software access for early testing.
Co-Pilots are cloud operators who work for you. Each Co-Pilot is responsible for providing continuous education to you and your team, as well as handling all aspects of cluster expansions and upgrades.
Success Story
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“In the quantitative trading industry, having the flexibility to dial up performance and grow on demand without a forced refresh or hardware tax is a key win for our business. Gemini has given us the freedom and flexibility to meet our data center needs at any given time, while also increasing our return on investment.”
Jesse Sieger Sr. System Engineer
FAQ
At its core – Gemini is a software offering, delivered to customers as a simple managed service on hardware they can now buy directly from our manufacturing partner (Avnet), at cost. Customers now get the complete hardware cost transparency and buying power that hyperscale cloud providers enjoy, but at the same time Universal Storage is delivered to their doorstep as a simple, turnkey appliance complete with white glove support from VAST.
Yes. More specifically, VAST is no longer in the hardware purchasing path, which means we are also no longer bound to the financial constraints of being measured on hardware margin contribution.
With Gemini, we can align our business directly with the business of our customers so they can:
No. The supported hardware is no different from the storage enclosures, software, switches and servers that we sold previously. The appliances we use are assembled by Avnet to the specification of our R&D team. This allows us to preserve the appliance experience that our customers love while eliminating much of the complexity and integration hassle that is often synonymous with pure software-defined storage offerings.
Customers can license as little as 100TB and have the option to scale by the full enclosure as well. Licenses start at 1 year and can be extended as long as desired.
Customers place an order through one of our certified partners and single purchase order is placed with Avnet. Avnet sends only the software portion of the order to VAST and we work together to ensure that the integrated solution is preconfigured and shipped ready to install as we always have.
What Gemini doesn’t change is the same industry leading experience that comes with VAST’s Universal Storage platform – customers interact with VAST for any hardware or software issue. This experience is the reason why customers buy VAST and then they buy a lot more. On average, VAST customers seamlessly add up to 3X their initial purchase within their first year.
Gemini provides several key benefits:
According to ESG, customers can save in excess of 70% by deploying through Gemini versus legacy hardware and deployment models. These savings are realized through lower hardware acquisition costs, pay-as-you-grow licensing, removal of data migration projects, guaranteed zero downtime and lower overall support and administrative costs.
By disaggregating the hardware and software from a purchasing perspective, customers can now refresh their hardware at whatever pace they want and make those decisions based on what’s best for their data center needs, not the financially engineered mechanisms of legacy storage. Legacy models couple hardware and software together such that a reinvestment in both are required to upgrade or in some cases even expand a storage cluster.
With Gemini customers can grow capacity as their data needs grow or scale performance to the needs of their application. There is no need for symmetric scaling of both delivering unparalleled acquisition savings.
With Gemini, buying performance and capacity aren’t just simpler and more flexible, they’re more cost effective and transparent than ever before. Instead of paying a hardware tax derived from multiple vendors uplifting the cost of hardware, customers now have the freedom to purchase the hardware at cost. Every component of the solution is broken out by cost on the invoice so you can see the savings.
No. Every VAST solution arrives on the customers doorstep with the best protections in the industry, our Zero-Compromise Guarantee. And now, with our VAST Co-Pilot Program, our customer support gets even better with a dedicated Level-3 engineer responsible for every aspect of system lifecycle assigned specifically to each VAST customer. Your VAST Co-Pilot will be there every step of the way to give you freedom from complexity and risk as you deploy and manage your infrastructure at no additional charge.
Hardware “at cost” means that VAST no longer marks up the price you pay for the hardware. Our manufacturing partner passes those savings on to you and provides complete transparency for what you discretely pay for hardware and software. What doesn’t change is the combined buying and negotiating power that VAST Data and Avnet have with component vendors to deliver volume economics for all VAST customers.
Yes. Enclosures running legacy appliance licenses and Gemini licenses can run in the same cluster seamlessly. Customers with existing clusters can simply purchase Gemini licenses for any expansion enclosures they purchase.
All hardware issues and/or RMA’s will be handled through the VAST customer Co-Pilot program. VAST is solely responsible for any hardware, software or component issues ensuring a single support experience for Gemini customers.
Yes. Customers will continue to have the same unconditional 60-day right of return with exactly the same terms as our previous model.
For customers who have purchased a term license, that license will automatically renew upon end of the contractual term for an additional one year at the originally negotiated rate before any one-time incentives.
No. Co-Pilot is a service that comes standard with every Gemini subscription. VAST Data has made a commitment to ensure that the Universal Storage experience is the best in the industry and is dedicated to the success of our customers. VAST Co-Pilots constantly monitor customer systems, prioritizing feature requests, handling all of the planning and deploying as organizations expand Universal Storage. Co-Pilots are expert cloud operators who work for you.
Each enclosure in a VAST cluster must have an associated license to run VAST’s software. When a customer chooses to replace an enclosure with a new bigger and/or faster enclosure they can transfer their Gemini capacity license from the old enclosure to the new enclosure.
VAST 100TB/MO SERVICES TERM SW-U-100
VAST 675TB/MO SERVICES TERM SW-FE-675
VAST 100TB/MO DARK SERVICES TERM SW-U-100-KYS
VAST 675TB/MO DARK SERVICES TERM SW-FE-675-KYS
No. Avnet is the sole manufacturer for Universal Storage systems enabling consistent assembly/test and yielding greater cost economics that are passed on to our customers. VAST manufacturing staff are onsite overseeing all aspects of manufacture of Universal Storage systems.
No. VAST customers can renew Gemini subscriptions for up to 10 years after appliance install at no increase in price. Unlike other storage vendors, VAST doesn’t make money when you refresh your hardware, you buy it at cost. Therefore, we have no incentive to force you to upgrade.
Learn how you can easily and securely store all your data on exabyte-scale, affordable flash. Our team will:
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