E‐Class Elevates Nimbus' All‐Flash Storage Platform For

E‐Class elevates Nimbus’ all‐flash storage platform for enterprise and cloud

Unified Storage system supports multiple block protocols and file systems with a new level of scalability, power efficiency and rack space density

By James E. Bagley Senior Analyst Deni Connor Principal analyst, Storage Strategies NOW January 2012

ll‐flash memory storage arrays began appearing two years ago as the need for high‐performing Astorage to feed the latest generation of servers became apparent. Early adopters were willing to overlook the lack of software features compared to their existing high‐end SAN arrays and NAS filers in exchange for the sheer speed delivered by solid‐state appliances. While often expensive on a cost per GB basis, limited in scalability, and usually implying a high cost single point of failure, these systems provided a cost advantage in two important areas:

1. Performance: The cost per input‐output operation per second (IOps) is a fraction of that of high‐end storage arrays using expensive 15K RPM hard disk drives (HDDs). Traditionally, the way to get high IOps out of HDDs is to deploy a lot of them and limit the capacity of each drive by a technique called short‐stroking. Since even the short‐stroke drives can only deliver about 250 IOps, data is written in stripes across many drives in an attempt to combine the speed of hundreds, if not thousands, of HDDs. Even this was often not enough, so caching is still used heavily, requiring complex battery backups and cache coherency intelligence in the array, multiplying system cost. 2. Efficiency: When compared to these behemoth mechanical arrays, flash memory systems hold the promise of far lower operating expense. If the objective is to achieve IOps, then the power consumed by the drives and the air conditioning to cool a conventional 15K disk array is in the range of twenty times that of a solid state system on a TB basis. Flash memory systems manage to deliver both higher IOPs and lower power consumption in less rack space and with less cooling required.

So why weren’t the early flash storage systems more widely adopted?

1. Scalability: Most flash systems max out at just a few terabytes, a drop in the proverbial bucket by today’s storage needs. If data sets exceeded these capacities and had to be spread across multiple arrays, then expensive modifications to applications and complex data placement decisions were necessary.

2. Connectivity: Adopters had a narrow choice of protocols for block storage, and file‐based arrays were only available as front‐end caches for an existing farm of network attached storage. 3. Lack of true High availability: Most flash storage systems contain one or more single points of failure, which may be acceptable for tertiary requirements but not production or mission‐critical environments. Resolving the issue with system mirroring is also cost prohibitive. This relegated many flash arrays to read caching, not actual data storage. 4. Lack of enterprise software: Fundamental storage array software features, like thin provisioning, in‐line de‐duplication, data protection through snapshots, synchronous mirroring, and replication were absent entirely. These features are table‐stakes in enterprise storage, and lacking them meant that flash systems were relegated to fairly narrow requirements. Nevertheless, flash storage arrays began to find their way into numerous applications that solely had the need for speed.

Nimbus E‐Class Flash Memory System Nimbus Data Systems entered the fray with an all‐flash array about two years ago with its Sustainable Storage® Platform, an over‐arching hardware/software platform based entirely in flash. The first system in this line‐up, the S‐Class, came to market with advanced software functionality, scalability and an entry price point that left many industry analysts, including us, with a large dose of skepticism. Undaunted, the Nimbus team began deploying systems, and the company has developed hundreds of happy customers using the S‐Class arrays, with a steady set of further performance and software enhancements since its original introduction. With the launch of the new E‐Class, Nimbus attains a level of fault tolerance, scalability, connectivity, storage density and feature set that is unsurpassed in the solid state field. This is all accomplished at cost points, both in terms of IOps and cost per TB, competitive with HDD‐based arrays.

Nimbus HALO storage operating system Key to the competitiveness of the E‐Class is its well‐developed operating system code base. The code base had been under development for a number of years prior to its debut in the S‐Class. Combined with the new hardware features of the E‐Class, enterprises are in a position to deploy highly‐ scalable fault tolerant systems that take full advantage of the HALO storage operating system features.

A significant advantage of the Nimbus platform is its unified storage technology, enabling both block and file storage simultaneously. This simplifies administration and maximizes storage utilization (by avoiding artificial SAN and NAS divides), enabling IT generalists and virtual machine administrators to rapidly deploy the technology leveraging their existing infrastructure (Ethernet, Fibre Channel, etc.) and IT skills. Another advantage is that the complete set of storage features is delivered standard on every E‐Class without incremental, feature‐by‐feature license fees.

HALO Storage OS Block Diagram

Fault tolerance and high availability The E‐Class platform consists of a pair of external redundant controllers with dual‐paths to up to 24 solid state storage enclosures. Each E‐Class controller has up to four active‐active IO modules. The IO modules can be configured as 10GbE or GbE for iSCSI block SAN operations or for CIFS and NFS file services. Other IO module configurations include Fibre Channel and Infiniband (leveraging the SCSI RDMA protocol, or SRP) functionality. With no single point of failure, the E‐Class supports automatic controller failover, non‐disruptive software updates and expansion of capacity while operating. Flash modules, power supplies and cooling fans can all be hot‐swapped. In fact, there are no active components lacking redundancy, delivering a true no‐single‐point‐of‐failure design. RAID 5, 6 and 10 algorithms are used to protect data on the Enterprise Multi‐Level Cell (eMLC) flash, which is deployed with 28% spare over‐provisioning for long‐term, maintenance free operations. High speed full‐duplex SAS ports connect the controllers to the solid state storage enclosures

Scalability, density, performance and sustainability E‐Class capacity begins at 10TB and scales to 500TB, supporting large datasets for database, virtualization, High Performance Computing, transaction processing and cloud storage. Due to the connectivity flexibility, VMware, Citrix Xen and Microsoft Hyper‐V and Server applications can be attached and managed without extensive SAN knowledge. With density of 10TB per U, a single industry‐ standard rack enclosure can support up to 440TB of performance memory, which is more than three times what is possible with 15K RPM disk arrays. Sustainability and low operating costs are impressive, with only five watts of power consumed per TB. This compares with 25 watts per TB in rotating drives of the 15K RPM type. In addition, cooling of the E‐Series is 1700 BTU for 100 TB of capacity, compared to 8500 BTU for the 15K HDDs. The cost per raw storage capacity is an impressive $10 per GB, exclusive of controllers and IO modules. This compares favorably to HDD systems of similar performance.

Nimbus Data E‐Class with 440TB Capacity

Our Take With the launch of the E‐Class, Nimbus has established a new benchmark for enterprise‐class all‐ flash storage systems. Unified storage is becoming essential in the enterprise because of its flexibility of deployment in both SAN and NAS environments, and the E‐Class can be deployed in a heterogeneous environment without forklift upgrades of existing systems. The scalability means that a datacenter can put in a single E‐Class system with confidence that it can support a complete set of application databases without the need to worry about data placement on multiple tiers of storage. Fault tolerance and built‐in reliability means that the E‐Class can be deployed in non‐stop use cases. With its eMLC‐ grade flash memory, RAID protection, and other wear distribution techniques, the E‐Class can provide many years of reliable service. The connectivity and storage feature set for are top‐notch and economical, since the features come standard on each system. With the E‐Class, enterprises can truly take advantage of all‐flash storage.

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