Nimbus Data Systems today added a high-end model to its line of S-class storage arrays, which are based solely on solid-state disk (SSD) drives.
The new 2U S-class S1000 model has 10TB of flash capacity on 24 400GB blades, and users can scale up to 600 flash blades for a maximum capacity of 250TB in a configuration with 25 10TB shelves.
Factoring in integrated data deduplication, Nimbus CEO Tom Isakovich says that the S-class now provides petabyte-level capacity with SSD performance, which could qualify the arrays for applications/environments such as service providers, cloud computing, virtualization, and high performance computing (HPC) applications.
The 6Gbps SAS SSDs are based on NAND flash technology from Micron that the company refers to as Enterprise Multi-Level Cell (EMLC), which reportedly provides 6X the endurance (reliability) of standard MLC flash memory. EMLC has the same density as MLC, but is still less expensive than single-level cell (SLC) NAND flash.
In addition to the EMLC NAND, Nimbus uses techniques that are becoming common among SSD vendors, including write amplification, wear leveling and over-provisioning.
Nimbus claims performance of 2.7 million I/Os per second (IOPS), throughput of 82Gbps, and power consumption of 15 watts per TB (which accounts for the company’s use of the term Sustainable Storage).
With the S1000 introduction, Nimbus introduced FlexConnect technology, which is a $9,995 option available for all S-class models. FlexConnect is essentially a virtual switch with up to 12 10Gigabit Ethernet (10GbE) ports and software that makes every volume and supported protocol (iSCSI, NFS, CIFS) available across every port, which could eliminate the need for an external 10GbE switch in some cases, according to Isakovich.
As do previous arrays in the S-class lineup, the S1000 supports iSCSI and NAS (NFS and CIFS) and comes with inline, block-level data deduplication and compression; thin provisioning; snapshots with allocate-on-write techniques; local and remote replication; and Nimbus’ HALO operating system.
The S-class S1000 array is priced at $10,000 per TB, or $99,995 for a 10TB configuration with all software.