STORAGE

Delivers breakthrough performance, efficiency, and data protection for virtualization, databases, and compute-intensive environments

Nimbus Data Systems today unveiled Sustainable Storage, a new vision and architecture for enterprise network storage that fundamentally reshapes IT infrastructure with next-generation performance, efficiency, and automated management. With the new Nimbus S-class storage systems, organizations can meet the challenges of rapidly accelerating IO demands and spiraling datacenter costs that traditional disk-based arrays cannot.

Featuring up to 504 redundant NAND flash blades and Nimbus' comprehensive HALO storage operating system, the S-class offers 95% lower energy costs, 24x greater IO performance, and on-demand scalability to 100 TB of solid state storage in a modular and resilient package. The Nimbus S-class offers industry-standard 10 GbE and GbE connectivity, unified iSCSI, NFS, and CIFS support, and proven data protection software. With solutions starting under $25,000, the Nimbus S-class is an affordable, drop-in alternative to traditional disk-based arrays that propels application performance, simplifies IT operations, and drives down datacenter costs for years to come.

"Nimbus challenges our certainty that we fully know what is reasonable and possible in the storage business - even when what is proposed matches well known business needs.  The company's approach runs counter to the accepted approach of the storage business over decades, by addressing underlying causes rather than merely ameliorating symptoms," said Mark Peters, Senior Analyst at the Enterprise Storage Group.  "Everyone - Nimbus included - knows that real world results will be the clincher, but immediate product availability means we are close to getting those, and if the S-class results are even close to its promises then this product is going to garner a great deal of favorable and amazed attention."

95% Reduction in Energy and Datacenter Operating Costs

Nimbus S-class systems consume 95% less power than traditional disk-based arrays, delivering an unprecedented 6,000 IOps per watt and up to 675,000 IOps per floor tile. Just one S-class shelf, consuming a mere 80 W and 2U of rackspace, delivers uncached IO performance comparable to 2,080 15K rpm drives that would require 8 full datacenter racks and 37,000 W of power, enabling organizations to aggressively reclaim rackspace and reign in energy costs. With available integrated inline deduplication and compression, S-class systems further reduce the storage footprint of virtual machines by up to 10:1, achieving capacity density up to 25 TB per U of rackspace, an 8x improvement over typical 15K rpm drive arrays.

24x Greater Storage Performance without Tuning, Tiering, or Caching

The S-class delivers up to 1.35M uncached IOps and 41 Gbps of throughput performance, providing ample storage horsepower for enterprise-wide virtualization, VDI deployments, databases and OLTP, and other IO-intensive HPC and rich media applications. Instead of relying on tiering, caching, or short-stroking techniques that increase operational complexity, cost, and power consumption without substantially improving performance, the S-class replaces the root of the storage performance problem – the hard drive – with flash blades. Each hot-swappable flash blade is connected to a 6G SAS internal architecture, providing scalable performance up to 24x greater than 15K rpm drive arrays. With 8 processor cores and TCP/IP offload technology, the S-class delivers superior performance without complex spindle allocation rules and tuning.

Comprehensive All-inclusive Storage Software Out-of-the-box

Developed over 5 years and in production at 200 sites today, Nimbus' HALO storage operating system, built into the S-class, provides comprehensive storage provisioning and data protection features with simplified management at no additional cost. HALO's 64-bit architecture and dynamic storage pooling enable IT administrators to add storage on-demand and automatically manage it as a single pool of capacity. Unified block and file support with iSCSI, NFS, and CIFS protocols enables superior consolidation of SAN and NAS storage with a single device, enhancing utilization and reducing hardware and management complexity. Thin provisioning and inline deduplication maximize the utilization and efficiency of the storage capacity, while HALO's unique snapshot technology offers unlimited rollback points while maintaining optimal performance and minimizing capacity usage. Always-on continuous local and remote replication and a dedicated Ethernet WAN port provide secure enterprise-class high availability and bandwidth-efficient disaster recovery in-the-box without costly third-party equipment.

Superior Resiliency, Uptime and Serviceability

S-class systems are engineered from the ground up for high availability. S-class flash blades use enterprise-grade NAND with 28% over-provisioning, write amplification, and robust wear-leveling technology to ensure exceptional durability in primary storage workloads. Each flash blade is further enhanced by RAID technology across the blades, protecting data even in the event of two simultaneous failures while also providing live spares that automatically rebuild blades in a fraction of the time of traditional hard drive rebuilds. Redundant network controllers, dual processors, mirrored system memory, redundant power supplies and fans, and dual operating system images ensure maximum availability. The auto-negotiating quad network ports enable users to migrate from Gigabit Ethernet connectivity to 10 GbE without any downtime. S-class systems are backed by an available 5-year warranty.

"Sustainable Storage is about optimizing the three pillars of enterprise IT: power, performance, and people," said Thomas Isakovich, CEO of Nimbus. "By engineering the S-class platform from the NAND silicon on up, powered by our own feature-rich HALO storage operating system, Nimbus is strategically positioned to best optimize storage efficiency and IO performance with closely coupled hardware and software. Sustainable Storage is an essential element of a broader industry trend towards greener and more agile IT infrastructures, and Nimbus is pleased to help lead this charge with the S-class."

Availability and Price

The Nimbus S-class is available now from Nimbus' worldwide network of integration and distribution partners.  A 2.5 TB model with a full HALO storage operating system license is $24,995; a 5 TB model is $39,995. The S-class scales modularly up to 21 enclosures for up to 100 TB total. Each system comes with a standard 1 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.