STORAGE

Nimbus Data Systems has announced its new S1000 enterprise flash system, providing 10 TB of solid state capacity per shelf, scalable to 250 TB within a single file system.

In addition, Nimbus announced the availability of its new FlexConnect technology across the entire S-class family, providing triple active-active 10 GbE network controllers for an unprecedented 120 Gbps of available bandwidth and 12 x 10 GbE ports, all from a single appliance.

With these announcements, Nimbus broadens its market reach beyond virtualization and databases to HPC applications, including data mining and data warehousing, seismic data processing for the energy market, astrophysical, biotech, and genomics analysis, and medical imaging. Service providers building public and private cloud computing services, such as VMs and storage on-demand, can now do so with a flash-based platform that offers both high capacity and 90% lower energy, cooling, and rackspace costs than traditional 15K rpm disk arrays. The powerful Nimbus HALO storage operating system, standard on all S-class systems, provides snapshots, replication, deduplication, and multi-protocol SAN and NAS functionality out of the box for complete enterprise storage management.

"IT managers for performance-intensive enterprises are challenged to overcome the IO bottlenecks, floor space constraints, and energy requirements of today's datacenters," said Jeff Janukowicz, research manager at IDC. "Comprehensive designs, such as Nimbus Data Systems' S-class Enterprise Flash Storage System, that delivers increased performance and high availability at far lower operational costs, are a welcome solution to these challenges."

The new S1000, building on the existing S250 and S500 models, takes advantage of higher density 34 nm EMLC NAND, offering 24 x 400 GB hot-swappable flash blades per S-class shelf for 10 TB of solid state capacity. All S-class systems now support increased scalability up to 600 flash blades in one file system for a total of 250 TB, making it the highest capacity, most scalable flash storage system on the market today.

FlexConnect, now available on all S-class models, is Nimbus' innovative scalable connectivity technology that improves performance while reducing the cost of deploying a multi-protocol 10 Gigabit Ethernet storage infrastructure.  FlexConnect operates as a 'virtual switch,' providing up to 12 x 10 GbE ports and making all storage available to all ports without the need to create and assign volumes to specific ports. Every port can run all supported protocols – iSCSI, CIFS and NFS – simultaneously, enabling unified block and file storage and converged networking.  By building switch functionality directly into the S-class storage system, FlexConnect eliminates the need for a separate 10 GbE switch in many environments, reducing cost, cabling, power consumption, and management complexity. Performance is also improved since switch latency is eliminated, shrinking the length of the data path between applications and storage to further improve IO response time.

The twelve ports are evenly balanced across three active-active controllers, providing redundancy and load-balancing. Auto-negotiating ports allow legacy GbE and next-generation 10 GbE to utilize the same hardware and cabling, dramatically simplifying deployment while providing a seamless path to 10 GbE without the need to replace storage systems or controllers. FlexConnect is available in versions that support optical cabling up to 500 meters with SFP+ and copper cabling with 10GBASE-T, allowing organizations to achieve 10 GbE performance with existing CAT6 cabling. When additional port count is needed, 10 GbE switches can be used for fan out or multi-level fabrics.  FlexConnect is compatible with 10 GbE switches and network interface cards from all major vendors.

"This new Nimbus S1000 system is a game changer for high-performance enterprises whose applications have long been bottlenecked by storage systems despite improvements in CPU, memory, and network performance," said Thomas Isakovich, CEO of Nimbus.  "As the industry's most scalable all-flash enterprise storage system, and now with embedded 10 GbE switching via FlexConnect technology, the Nimbus S-class exceeds the IO demands of the most rigorous storage environments and provides essential storage software in a fraction of the datacenter footprint of traditional disk-based platforms."

Availability and Price

Nimbus S-class systems are available now from Nimbus' worldwide network of integration and distribution partners.  The S1000 10 TB model with a full HALO storage operating system license is $99,995.  The FlexConnect option in either optical fibre or copper can be added for $9,995. Each system comes with a standard one-year warranty (upgradable to 3 or 5 years) and optional 24x7x365 4-hour onsite service. Additional information about Nimbus' S-class systems is available online at http://www.nimbusdata.com.