Alacritech's ANX 1500 network file system (NFS) appliance uses a combination of solid state drives (SSD) and DRAM, along with specialized firmware, to cache NFS v3 data and metadata and relieve NAS engines of the task.

The ANX 1500 reduces the number of hard drives that need to be deployed in a high-performance file serving environment.

Today, large enterprises often employ a practice known as disk "short stroking," deploying massive numbers of disk drives while accessing data only on the edge of drive platters. By accessing only the outer parameters of the drive, the read-write heads need to move shorter distances and read-write performance improves dramatically.

Alacritech claims the ANX 1500 pays for itself "faster than any other storage solution" and provides by far the lowest cost per operations per second (OPS).

For example, a single ANX 1500, with 4TB of SSDs, can deliver 120,000 NFS operations per second (OPS) for about $110,000, and only requires about one-fifth of the NAS infrastructure that would otherwise be needed for such performance. Base ANX 1500 pricing starts at $70,000.