Surprise! Freshly uncloaked hybrid flash/disk array startup Reduxio says backup snapshots are a problem and its BackDating technology solves that problem. Admit it; you are surprised, aren't you?

Reduxio is an Israeli startup, in the sense that its research and development is based there, although it is headquartered in Silicon Valley. It was founded in 2012 by CEO Mark Weiner, Nir Peleg and Amnon Strasser, and says it has received $12m in A-round funding (2013) and $15m in B (2014) after getting off the ground with $1.9m in seed funding.

Investors include Seagate Technology, Jerusalem Venture Partners, Carmel Ventures and Intel Capital; a fine roster.

Reduxio says it has more than a dozen of its HX 550 hybrid systems deployed. They run its TimeOS which features:

NoDup real-time, in-line, always-on, global dedupe and compression, working across the memory cache, flash, and disk tiers

Tier-X continuous automatic block tiering thzt stores data iniutially on flash and moves it as its access rate slows to slower disk tiers

BackDating providing the ability, by cloning, to recover data infinitely to any second in the history of a volume

The NoDup is said to be so efficient that hundreds of virtual machines can be served from the memory cache.

TimeOS' metadata function tracks all IO operations to storage and BackDating operates like a continuous data recorder. You can recover data to any point in time for data protection or application testing. There is no need, says the firm, to have a planned snapshot schedule, or consistency groups, as data is inherently consistent across volumes.

Thus far its gear has been validated, Reduxio says, with apps from VMware, Microsoft and Oracle. Naturally Reduxio's marketing includes a message about flash speed and disk capacity and cost-efficiency. And, glory hallelujah, it does not say it's software-defined. It does say it's easy to deploy and manage though, but that's par for the course.

Reduxio declares with confidence that it "is perfectly positioned to deliver exceptional value and unparalleled performance to the largest of enterprises with uncompromsing data storage requirements."

Well, that's it, every other storage supplier can close down, sack its staff, and rue its mistaken dreams.

Actually all existing mainstream array vendors now have hybrid architectures. Newer suppliers such as NexGen, Nimble Storage, Tegile, Tintri, and others like X-IO all have stakes in the hybrid game, saying they use flash well and optimise disk capacity. Reduxio better have something pretty sensational to dislodge any of this lot.

If you're attending VMworld, Aug 29 – Sep 3, in San Francisco's Moscone Centre, you can check out Reduxio at stand 504. Get a BackDating backgrounder here (pdf). ®