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| Nimbus, founded in 2006, develops
award-winning Sustainable Storage systems, the most intelligent,
efficient and
fault-tolerant
solid state storage platform engineered for server and desktop virtualization,
databases, HPC, and next-generation cloud infrastructure. |
.... |
Combining low-latency flash
memory hardware, comprehensive data management and protection software, and
highly-scalable multiprotocol storage features, Nimbus systems deliver
dramatically greater performance at a significantly lower operating cost than
conventional disk-based primary storage arrays, all at a comparable
acquisition cost.
For more information, visit www.nimbusdata.com,
See also:-
Nimbus
- editor mentions on StorageSearch.com,
Nimbus's news
page | |
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| Who's who in SSD? - by
Zsolt Kerekes,
editor - February 2013 |
Nimbus Data Systems is 1 of more than
100 companies in the
rackmount SSDs
market.
when did they enter the SSD market?
Nimbus
has been shipping SSDs in its racks since
2008 -
initially as accelerator options for its HDD arrays - and since January
2009 as pure
solid state storage. The company's internal hardware architecture is what I
call "open"
- in that it is based on RAID
like arrays of 2.5"
SAS SSDs which the
company designs itself and which use
eMLC. But
Nimbus doesn't sell SAS SSDs to other SSD array companies.
The company
is also 1 of many companies in these directories / market segments:-
rackmount SSDs,
iSCSI SSDs,
FC SANs,
Infiniband SSDs and
HA SSDs.
Top
SSD Company?
Nimbus made its debut in StorageSearch.com's list of
the
top 20 SSD companies
- in the 3rd quarter
of 2011. In the most recent quarter - the
4th quarter of 2012
- Nimbus was ranked #12 in the top 20 - which was up 6 places from the
previous quarter.
The company recently
announced
it has been shipping at the rate of over 1
petabyte of SSD
storage / month.
enterprise Silos?
Nimbus has
never appeared in the
fastest SSDs list.
In my enterprise SSD
silo categories I think Nimbus is a good fit in the fast and the high end
of fast-enough rackmount SSD roles.
architecture and IP strengths?
SSD software is a
substantive differentiating IP asset of the company. The
HALO storage OS is
integrated in all its SSD racks.
The strong factors in Nimbus's SSD
architecture are its software - which in my view benefits from the company
founder's unique experience in developing unified SAN architectural concepts
for more than a decade. And by designing its own SSDs - Nimbus is able to
tweak system architectural features - such as performance (non blocking SAS
backplane), manageability (better integration with SSD controller data),
high availability (failover routing) and cost. The flash modules are about 80%
of the hardware.
You can see more detail in the article - "another
conversation with Nimbus - PCIe SSDs and VCs" - further down this page | | |
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| who are
Nimbus's hottest competitors? - are you sure about that... |
Editor:- August 23, 2012 - SSD companies often
misidentify (in my view) who their most serious sustainable competitors really
are - as predicted by which
enterprise SSD apps silos
they satisfy best.
I was discussing this recently with Thomas Isakovich,
CEO of Nimbus Data
Systems and Scott Kline ,
Director of Corporate Communications as they were getting ready to
launch a
new fast SSD rackmount system (which they earlier this week.)
What I
was most interested in - was the companies they had named as key competitors.
For
the record - Nimbus's list included:-
Violin Memory,
Texas Memory Systems,
Pure Storage and
SolidFire. And the
idea behind the document was to suggest that the new system from Nimbus (called
the Gemini ) is at
least as good or better than the competition - based on what was being compared.
It
was clear to me that a lot of effort had gone into preparing their briefing
document - showing things like comparative capacity per U, price per TB, IOPS,
latency and that sort of thing. And I told them I enjoy reading these things -
because they are the closest I get to reading SSD articles (or joined up writing
about the SSD market) which someone else has written.
I said - "There
are 2 companies in there which I wouldn't have had on the list at all - and at
least one other that I would have added instead.
Now I knew I had
their attention. I always try to divert from any preordained script about the
SSD market - because that's what makes these conversations interesting.
"And
how did you decide which competitors to put on the list?" - I asked.
"We
put companies on this list based on those mentioned as competitors by customers"
they said.
"Well" I said "that explains it. Most
end-users often aren't clear enough in their own undertanding of what they need
- and many SSD vendors aren't focused enough yet to know which business they
should go for and which they shouldn't waste time on. But just because you butt
up against a bunch of companies doesn't mean to say they are your most serious
long term competitors."
"Who would you take out of the list?"
Tom asked "and why?"
I said
Pure Storage -
because they aren't in the same performance class as you (Pure is fast-enough -
whereas Nimbus is fast). And I'd have left SolidFire out of the comparison table
too.
Another - even better reason not to have them in your comparison
list - I said - is that Nimbus has from time to time appeared in the
Top SSD companies list
- whereas Pure Storage and SolidFire haven't. It's less important to worry
about competitors with much lower ratings and concentrate on what you can do
about competitors who are already scoring better than you in the minds of the
market.
Obviously Nimbus wasn't going to argue with me about that
angle.
"OK" Tom said - "who would you put in the list
instead?"
"Fusion-io" - I
said. "Because their new ION
software is a significant product capability which intersects with the set
of paramaters you've shown in your competitive rankings. The cost and
performance of FIO ION based systems will be an important factor in the fast
rackmount SSD market."
My thinking about this is that while it's
unlikely that many end users would realistically look at an SSD rack from
Nimbus and Fusion-io based technology as viable suppliers for exactly the same
application slot - there would be a small number of high volume end users who
would be perfectly happy with the ION based solution and would wrap their own
cloud-like fault tolerant wrappers around it - if they thought it would give
them a significant cost saving compared to the built in HA/FT in the Nimbus
product.
And because Fusion-io may already be in use in servers within
a customer site - that meant that a starting point for competitive comparisons
in rack based SSDs would often be FIO based - even if it wasn't an exact
functional fit.
Nimbus said they have supplied their rack SSDs into
customers who were using Fusion-io cards in servers.
I said
I wasn't surprised
because there are some apps where that would be the best thing for the customer
to do. (I'll be returning to the subject of boundary conditions in the
enterprise SSD market in my September blog.)
Another thing I asked
Nimbus was - do they support
adaptive DSP?
Nimbus said no.
I said - that's another thing which is going
to impact the cost per
TB in enterprise SSD racks - so I didn't think that the cost leadership they
were showing in their tables would last for long. (That was before the recent
launch by Skyera BTW
- which is another company to add to the compete-with list.)
OK - so
apart from chatting about the SSD market - what did I learn about Nimbus's new
SSD?
As I said to Tom and Scott - what's interesting is that if you
assemble a list of leading competitively priced fast SSD racks - then you
can get very similar performance, pricing and capacity density from systems
which have very different internal architectures.
- proprietary:- TMS, Violin
- open (array of PCIe SSDs) - Fusion-io
- open (array of SAS SSDs) - Nimbus
Customers with different risk
profiles (roadmap
symmetry) and prefences about the granularity of how they replace SSDs (is
it the module or rack level? - it's less risky pulling out 2.5" SSDs than
conventional PCIe SSD cards for example) will lean towards one type of supplier
rather than another.
For the same reason - most enterprise SSD users
will wait several quarters to see how reliable Skyera's new systems are in
somebody else's environment rather than risk being early adopters - even
Skyera does have the lowest price in the industry.
3 factors in the
Nimbus racks which I should mention here - and which I haven't written about
before are:-
- internally the array has point to point connections to every SAS drive.
That's a factor in throughput performance and latency.
- the Nimbus product allows non-disruptive software updates.
- Nimbus use high level software in their OS as part of the endurance
management. Overall their rack supports 50x full capacity writes each day for 5
years. (That's a good figure which compares with adaptive DSP - although Nimbus
is doing this a different way using
RAM cache in
each of their flash SSDs.)
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| another
conversation with Nimbus - PCIe SSDs and VCs |
Editor:- February 2, 2012 - I had an interesting
discussion yesterday with Thomas Isakovich,
CEO and founder of Nimbus
which recently launched its first high availability SAN SSDs.
To be
sure - HA
enterprise SSDs is an "up-for-grabs" SSD growth segment so that
is interesting in itself - but I told Nimbus's Marcomms Director, Scott Kline -
in advance of the call that I would be much more interested in having a
general update about how Nimbus sees itself in the SSD market - than simply
having a CEO voice-over of their new SSD rack's bullet points -
particularly as Nimbus said it was profitable (unlike some other well known
enterprise SSD companies).
a long view
In the minutes
leading up to my call with Tom Isakovich yesterday I looked up his email
address (which I always do just in case the phone fails to connect) and I
reread some earlier exchanges we had going all the way back to when he
was in his previous
company in 1999.
It got me thinking - this is someone who
takes a long term view of where enterprise storage is going. It occurred to me
that if I were to publish some of Tom's views and predictions from more than a
decade ago - they would still stand the test of time as sound bites today.
a
profitable enterprise SSD company
Tom told me Nimbus is
profitable and debt free. As a private company they don't disclose revenue. But
revenue last year was 5x the year before.
VCs IPOs and
acquisitions
Tom said because they don't have
VCs involved they have
more freedom to pursue product development and business development strategies.
Currently that would be via organic growth. So it looks to me that unlike VC
backed loss making SSD competitors - they don't need to steer in the IPO or
wannabe acquired lane.
SAS SSD arrays latency vs PCIe SSDs
I
aked if they had any plans to support
PCIe SSDs (or
2.5" PCIe SSDs)
with their virtualization software - because I guessed they could do it - if
they saw a market opportunity for it.
Tom said - no. Nimbus is
sticking with network storage boxes based around removable SAS SSDs. He could
see no advantages for them to start integrating PCIe SSDs.
When I asked
about latency - Tom said that in one customer evaluation - a Nimbus system
with an Infiniband connection delivered better latency than a PCIe SSD
competitor with an IB router. So in the rackmount SAN SSD space where Nimbus
was focused - PCIe SSDs didn't offer anything for him that he couldn't do with
SAS.
Inside server racks - he agreed - users would use a lot of PCIe
SSDs - just as HDD SANs didn't replace the need for server DAS.
where
is the core of Nimbus's SSD IP?
As I expected - Tom said - it's
mostly in their software - which can manage half a petabyte of SSD in a single
unified file system.
I knew from earlier conversations that Nimbus
design their own SAS SSD modules - but I wasn't sure - apart from cost
advantages and lowering the risk of
firmware shocks -
just how important their hardware IP was. Tom said that their earlier
non-blocking mid plane technology was a factor in performance - but their
new seamless HA failover architecture couldn't be done so well with commercial
off the shelf (COTS) SSDs.
watts and Petabyte SSDs
Tom
said that big data SSD enterprise customers (like eBay - which uses Nimbus SSDs)
look beyond price/performance to assess running costs and density - and he
said he thought that Nimbus's SSDs (TB /U and W/TB) are leading the market
in those respects.
I said that competitors like
Texas Memory Systems
and Violin - would be
sure to disagree on many of the "best" claims in their press release
documents but Tom said that for many users Nimbus's HALO software would be
the deciding factor.
I ended by saying that in 2012 - enterprise
SSD makers with reliable market proven products - would see customer demand
growing on a scale they had never seen before - and as my stats tell me that
many of you readers are interested in learning more about Nimbus - I'll be
updating my profile for them more often. | | |
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In April 2008 - Nimbus announced
an
SSD accelerator option in
its Breeze H-series 10GbE IP Storage (SSD ASAP). A system with
34TB of storage, and 64GB of mirrored SSD costs about $120,000.
Nimbus
carries on the torch of a network storage operating system - which under the
name "Cloudbreak" - was first developed by Nimbus's founder at
TrueSAN Networks
.
That's the kind of groundwork thinking you need to make an
SSD accelerated storage system work economically as part of a
hybrid HDD-SSD
array - while avoiding high manual setup, tuning and configuration costs.
In January
2009 - Nimbus launched its
DH200 - a 4
port 10GbE NAS - which supports upto 10TB of flash SSD storage. See also:-
rackmount SSDs.
In
April 2010 - Nimbus
Data Systems
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. ...read my discussion
with Nimbus's CEO
In July 2010 -
Nimbus Data Systems-
announced
higher
density in its 10 GbE rackmount SSD systems - 10TB (enterprise MLC)
in 2U - implemented as 24 x 400GB hot-swappable
SAS flash blades. The
company also announced improved connectivity - upto 120Gbps - from its internal
12 port FlexConnect 'virtual switch' which makes all storage available to all
ports without the need to create and assign volumes to specific ports. Pricing
for a 10TB system with FlexConnect is just under $110k.
In February
2011 -
Nimbus Data Systems
announced that it
achieved
profitability in its fiscal year ending December 31, 2010.
"Today's
announcement of achieving profitability marks Nimbus' maturity from an
innovative startup to an established storage player intent on achieving rapid
market expansion, unmatched innovation, and leadership in the emerging
sustainable storage and flash memory storage market," stated Thomas Isakovich,
CEO and founder of Nimbus. "Our commitment to customer satisfaction and
responsible growth reflects in this important company milestone."
In
August 2011 - Nimbus
Data Systems announced that eBay has deployed more than 100 terabytes of
Nimbus S-Class flash memory to power its VMware virtual server infrastructure.
The Nimbus solution delivered near line-rate 10 Gbps iSCSI performance to the
VMware hosts while consuming 78% less energy and 50% less rackspace than
conventional disk-based
solutions.
Nimbus also announced added
InfiniBand and
FC SAN support to its
pre-existing interface options.
In October 2011 - Nimbus
entered StorageSearch.com's quarterly list of the
top 20 SSD companies
for the first time - coming in at #16 for Q3 2011.
In January
2012 - Nimbus
announced
its entry into the
high availability
enterprise SSD market with the uveiling of the company's -
E-Class systems -
which are 2U rackmount SSDs with 10TB
eMLC per U of
usable capacity and no single point of failure. Interface support includes
unified 10GbE,
FC, and
Infiniband. Pricing
starts at $150K approx for a 10TB dual configuration system.
In
Editor:- March 2013 - Nimbus Data Systems
announced
new software APIs which support its proprietary
HALO OS based family
of rackmount SSDs
- and report on hundreds of real-time and historical metrics such as:-
flash endurance, capacity utilization, latency, power consumption, deduplication
rates, and overall system health. Another new feature is health monitoring
apps which run on Android / Apple phones and tablets. |
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| Nimbus brings flash SMART
plus stats to SSD rackmounts |
Editor:- March 25, 2013 - Nimbus Data Systems
today announced
new software APIs which support its proprietary
HALO OS based family
of rackmount SSDs
- and report on hundreds of real-time and historical metrics such as:-
flash endurance, capacity utilization, latency, power consumption, deduplication
rates, and overall system health.
Another new feature is that sys
admins can monitor their
Nimbus SSD arrays
via new apps on Android / Apple phones and tablets.
Thomas Isakovich,
CEO and founder of Nimbus said the new software framework would enable cloud
architects and enterprise customers to gain greater insight into their flash
storage by viewing internal aspects of their flash storage which mattered to
them - rather than simply relying on benchmark indicators which have been
cherry picked by vendors or reviewers | | |
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| "Although we can
hearken back to a simpler time when the SSD market was smaller and all the top
players in it were private companies - which in fact isn't that long ago - one
of the new realities of the SSD market is that there's nearly as much interest
in SSDs as $$Ds (lucrative investment vehicles) as in SSDs as business improving
technologies." |
| anticipating -
this week's big story - in SSD news | | |
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| Nimbus does
that "no spof SSD" thing |
Editor:- January 31, 2012 - Nimbus Data Systems
today
announced
its entry into the
high availability
enterprise SSD market with the uveiling of the company's -
E-Class systems -
which are 2U rackmount SSDs with 10TB
eMLC per U of
usable capacity and no single point of failure. Unified interface
support includes 10GbE,
FC, and
Infiniband.
Nimbus
software (which supports upto 0.5
petabytes in a
single SSD file system) automatically detects controller and path failures,
providing non-disruptive failover. The E-Class also supports online software
updates and online capacity expansion. It has
RAID protection and
hot-swappable flash, power, and cooling modules. Pricing starts at $150K approx
for a 10TB dual configuration system.
Editor's comments:-
Nimbus seemed incredulous at my immediate reaction to the preliminary info they
sent me. I said I knew of competing shipping SSDs which were denser, faster
and offered more HA features too. |
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But that's not to understate
the value of what the company does. Instead of being impressed by a bunch of
me-too technical metricals I was rather more impressed to learn that Nimbus
is still profitable. | | | |
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| "Suippose you
sell an SSD system to a customer - let's say a low cost
MLC SSD for
video streaming - you can't be sure that later on they might not redeploy that
same system into a different application - with higher write IOPS...." |
| ...why Nimbus prefers eMLC - from
the CEO interview
April 26, 2010. | | |
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| When thinking
about SSD market boundary conditions the starting point is often... this is what
we expect most people to do. But what if we change some of the assumptions?
Maybe stretch them to breaking point. Is there a point where the market would
behave in a completely different way? And what can we learn from that?" |
| Boundaries
Analysis in SSD Market Forecasting | | |
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| the 3 fastest PCIe
SSDs? |
Are you tied up in
knots trying to shortlist flash SSD accelerators ranked according to
published comparative benchmarks?
You know the sort of thing I mean -
where a magazine compares 10 SSDs or a blogger compares 2 SSDs against each
other. It would be nice to have a shortlist so that you don't have to waste too
much of your own valuable time testing unsuitable candidates wouldn't it?
StorageSearch's long running
fastest SSDs directory
typically indicates 1 main product in each form factor category but those
examples may not be compatible with your own ecosystem.
If so a
new article -
the 3 fastest PCIe
SSDs list (or is it really lists?) may help you cut that Gordian
knot. Hmm... you may be thinking that StorageSearch's editor never gives easy
answers to SSD questions if more complicated ones are available.
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But in this case you'd be
wrong. (I didn't say you'd like the answers, though.) ...read the article | | | |
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