Nimbus Data Launches Big-Scale, Low-Power Solid State Storage System

Nimbus Data Systems, which claims its storage systems are ostensibly intelligent enough to think for themselves, has launched what it says is the industry’s first fully redundant, multiprotocol solid-state storage array.

The new E-Class Flash Memory System, loaded exclusively with enterprise-grade NAND flash, features complete redundancy and no single point of failure, Nimbus founder and CEO Tom Isakovich told eWEEK.

Biggest NAND array

“This is the most scalable and highest-density solid-state storage system yet engineered,” Isakovich said. “It has more than three times the density of standard 15K RPM [hard] disk arrays.”

An E-Class system supports up to 500TB of capacity in one logical pool while consuming as little as five watts of electricity per terabyte, Isakovich said.

Since it has no single point of failure, Nimbus’ E-Class is ticketed for high-intensity applications such as enterprise-wide server virtualisation, Web infrastructure, database clusters, virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) and high-performance computing.

The E-Class platform consists of a pair of redundant controllers and up to 24 solid-state storage enclosures, Isakovich said. Each controller can support up to four active-active I/O modules, including the connectivity choices of 10 Gigabit Ethernet, Fibre Channel or InfiniBand.

The Nimbus Halo storage operating system is a unified SAN and NAS software stack currently in operation at about 200 customer installations. It automatically detects controller and path failures to provide no disruptive failover, Isakovich said. The system supports online software updates and online capacity expansion.

Using RAID protection and hot-swappable NAND flash, power and cooling modules, components can be replaced without needing to take the system down.

The Nimbus E-Class is available now, with a 10TB dual-controller configuration priced at $149,995 (£95,205). The full Halo storage operating system is included in the system price.

Chris Preimesberger

Editor of eWEEK and repository of knowledge on storage, amongst other things

View Comments

  • It sounds as if Nimbus is aiming at big data if they want to use cooling costs to market this flash array. Flash storage is more expensive than disk, so it will be interesting to see if they can balance each other out for users.

    Sarah
    Mosaic Technology
    http://www.mosaictec.com

    • Thanks for the comment Sarah. You are correct in that with most cases flash is a lot more expensive than disk. We have changed that with a pricing model that is straight forward and actually cost comparative to 15k disk based systems at $10GB raw. Having the complete software and hardware feature set found in these high end disk based systems is key as well. We always hear a lot about the performance gains from this great technology. The efficiency gains are tremendous as well and Nimbus' focus is in the efficiency piece as much as performance.

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