Storage specialist Nexsan launched a line of solid-state enhanced unified storage systems, known as the NST series. In addition to providing both file-mode (network-attached storage, or NAS) and block-mode (iSCSI), the NST series combines solidstate storage with Serial ATA (SATA) and SAS drives via Nexsan's FasTier acceleration technology. FasTier automatically and intelligently uses the speed of solid-state memory in a fault-tolerant architecture to accelerate the performance of SAS and SATA spinning media. Prices start at $16,000 and scale based on configuration.
NST unified storage systems with FasTier are designed to optimize caching and tiering by using dynamic RAM and flash-based solid-state memory, along with spinning media, to triple real-world random I/O performance. The new NST systems combine FasTiers software with up to 24 Xeon CPU cores, 192GB of DRAM, 12 dedicated RAID engines and up to1PB of storage capacity.
The technology can scale from 100GB to 2.8TB, allowing an NST system to hold entire working sets, without the need to use a separate management paradigm. The systems also deliver a storage density of nearly 15 drives per U of rack space, and AutoMaid power management for up to 85 percent lower power and cooling costs.
According to a recent report from the Enterprise Strategy Group (ESG), the adoption rate of unified storage is growing steadily. Unified storage is attractive in terms of both operational and financial efficienciesa winning combination by any standard, said Mark Peters, senior analyst at ESG. The combination of unremitting data growth, a still-cautious macroeconomic climate and massively higher expectations of IT, means users are not only seeking better cost structures in their infrastructure but simultaneously want better performance and application support."
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Peters said Nexsan can provide that mix with its FASTier-enabled NST5000, by delivering significant advances in unified storage that can help IT organizations economically increase their productivity in both highly virtualized and/or cloud computing environments.
For our cloud initiative, we required a reliable, high-performance storage solution that also provided the densest storage possible, said Sanford Coker, director of storage administration for managed hosting services provider Datapipe. The NST with FasTier accelerated storage option provided the performance we needed in the package required. The result is enhanced productivity and operational efficiencies giving us better business performance at a lower cost.
NST storage systems feature a graphical user interface with wizards designed to streamline setup and maintenance for the IT generalist. Nexsan Flexible Scalability helps break through the barriers imposed by scale-up architectures whose controllers cannot keep up as the population of drives is increased, and is offered on all NST storage systems. The systems include multiple models that range from 8TBs to more than 1PB.
At Nexsan, our goal is to deliver the best-in-class, turnkey solutions that match the needs of todays demanding midsize enterprises, said Gary Watson, CTO of Nexsan. With the NST systems, we have paired support for iSCSI block, NFS/CIFS shared folders, snapshots, replication, quotas, thin provisioning and online capacity expansion all into one easy-to-manage solution. The result is an enterprise-class storage system that can meet the capacity, performance and availability needs of any environment, without a heavy investment.
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