StorageSearch.com talks "SSD" to Nimbus's CEO |
Editor:- April 26, 2010 - I spoke at length to
Nimbus's CEO, Thomas Isakovich
- about the new SSD systems they launched today.
Isakovich been a
network storage OS pioneer for 10 years (prior to Nimbus he founded
TrueSAN)
so I joked that - unlike many new SSD companies - at least this product wouldn't
be surprised by applications doing the wrong type of R/W IOPS (different to those
encountered in benchmark suites).
The 1st question I asked was
about the storage blades. I had already guessed (and he confirmed) the interface
was SAS. But the
surprise came when I asked whose
SSDs was he using?
Isakovich
said Nimbus makes its own SSDs - and that while the company was talking to many
SSD controller
suppliers - it planned from the outset to change these suppliers for other best
of breed alternatives as the market evolved. In this respect - Nimbus is
different to most others in the NAS SSD space - because the company supplies the
whole software stack from the choice of silicon up through the OS and into the
network. (Editor's note:- in contrast competitor
WhipTail Technologies'
product is a complex integrated bundle which uses 3rd party COTS
2.5" SSDs,
licenses the flash write attenuation software from
EasyCo and licenses
dedupe technology from Exar.)
I asked Isakovich does Nimbus use SLC or MLC? - he said the internal
flash is Micron's
"enterprise
grade MLC" - which has 6x the
endurance of
standard MLC.
He explained that Nimbus is aiming to offer a
competitively priced product (2.5TB model costs $24,995) but unlike other
vendors they decided not to offer separate
MLC or SLC
versions. The argument being that once you sold a system to a customer - let's
say a low cost MLC SSD for video streaming - you couldn't be sure that the
customer might not redeploy that same system into a different application
accelerating their database (which needs higher endurance). His thinking seems
to be that once the SSD rack is out in the wild of the enterprise environment -
it has to be tough enough to handle ALL enterprise applications.
The
flash systems include 28%
over-provisioning
and write attenuation.
I asked about the size of the RAM cache -
Isakovich said it's 48GB which puts it in the
fat flash SSD
class. Users do have options on how they can deploy this to tweak performance.
Unlike SSD ASAPs -
which are designed to accelerate
hard disk arrays - the
name of the game with the new Nimbus product line is to make it attractive for
users to place all their critical
IOPS
intensive data into SSD.
And with this new product Nimbus is saying -
they like the flexibility and features of
SAS SSDs - but that
doesn't mean to say the market has to pay
STEC or
Pliant
prices. | | |
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how
StorageSearch.com reported Nimbus's entry into the SSD market
Nimbus
nixes STEC SAS SSD costs in new iSCSI rackmount |
Editor:- April 26, 2010 - Nimbus Data Systems
today launched
its S-class
storage system - a 2U 10GbE rackmount SSD with 24 hot swappable
internal 6Gbps SAS
flash SSD blades in an 80W power footprint offering 5TB protected capacity for
$39,995.
Powered by Nimbus' HALO storage OS the systems support
iSCSI, NFS, and CIFS
protocols and provide inline
deduplication
(typically 10 to 1), continuous local and remote replication capability
in-the-box at no additional cost. Data protection inside the box ensures that no
data is lost even with 2 simultaneous blade faults.
Editor's
comments:- there has been a lack of market leadership in the
NAS compatible
rackmount SSD
market. This new product from Nimbus shows what can be achieved with a true
bottom up enterprise design - in the same way that for
FC SAN connected
applications you'd look at systems from
Texas Memory Systems
and in the PCIe
connected rackmount SSD market you'd look at
NextIO or at
Violin Memory. | |
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