SOUTH SAN FRANCISCO, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Nimbus Data Systems, Inc., the leading innovator in next-generation flash memory infrastructure, today introduced the Gemini X-series, a new scale-out all-flash array (AFA) for large enterprises and cloud service providers. The Gemini X-series features a patent-pending scale-out all-flash architecture that enables customers to linearly scale capacity with performance, all while delivering the full unified storage and data management software of Nimbus Data’s award-winning HALO operating system. With the Gemini X-series, customers can deploy a petabyte of fully-redundant all-flash storage capacity in a single namespace in just half a rack of space, offering by far the industry’s most efficient, highest performance, and most software-rich all-flash infrastructure to date.
True Scale-Out with Uncompromising Unified Storage and Data Management Software
As the volume of digital data that is created continues to accelerate, CIO’s are demanding ways to abate the overall total cost of ownership (TCO) of their IT infrastructure and extend the ROI of existing data centers. At the same time, organizations must balance cost containment with the agility to expand capacity and performance quickly and on-demand. The Gemini X-series offers customers a new view on the economic value of an all-flash environment, challenging their tier-1 storage acquisition strategy.
Building on the success of Nimbus Data’s modular Gemini F-series all-flash systems, the Gemini X-series extends all-flash from application-specific use cases (like databases and VDI) to full-scale tier-1 storage replacement, offering capacity and software that is equal or better than high-end disk arrays but with the superior density, power efficiency, and reliability of flash memory. Engineered from the ground up by Nimbus Data, the Gemini X-series features deduplication and compression for greater storage efficiency, as well as full data and metadata checksums, snapshots and replication for ensuring absolute data protection. Featuring redundancy throughout with no-single-point-of-failure and easy non-disruptive component maintenance, the Gemini X-series delivers the reliability, availability and serviceability (RAS) characteristics that customers have come to expect from top-end storage arrays.
“The Gemini X-series all-flash array is our finest technical achievement, combining true scale-out performance and capacity with the full complement of award-winning unified storage and data management features that Nimbus Data is known for,” said Thomas Isakovich, CEO and Founder of Nimbus Data. “The Gemini X-series all-flash array will enable the next wave of all-flash adoption. By packing about one petabyte of flash in a single system, with the potential of several petabytes after deduplication and compression, the Gemini X-series enables customers to reduce data center operating costs by more than 95-percent compared to disk-based systems.”
Patent-Pending Gemini X1000 Flash Director
The Gemini X-series consists of two patent-pending building blocks: Flash Directors and Flash Nodes. At the heart of the Gemini X-series is the all-new X1000 Flash Director. This revolutionary device, deployed in pairs for redundancy, combines a non-blocking 320 Gbps RDMA switch, up to 40 user-configurable ports for connectivity to the existing infrastructure, and centralized cluster management software. The X1000 Flash Director seamlessly virtualizes storage capacity across the cluster into a single namespace, load-balances IO evenly across all nodes, and centralizes management of the entire system. By also supporting RAIN (redundant array on independent nodes) configurations, the Gemini X-series offers multiple levels of redundancy to satisfy the most mission-critical environments. At full scale, the Gemini X-series supports up to 40 GBps of sustained throughput and four million 4K IOps, all while maintaining sub-100 microsecond latency across the cluster.
Ultra-dense Fault-tolerant Gemini X96 and X48 Flash Nodes
Users can scale capacity and performance of the Gemini X-series by adding Flash Nodes without interruption. The Gemini X96 and X48 Flash Nodes combine 96 TB or 48 TB of all-flash storage, respectively, along with redundant hot-swappable storage processors and power/cooling modules. Each Flash Node fully offloads hardware-intensive operations like parity protection, inline deduplication, flash management, and encryption. Requiring just 2U of rack space and 400 watts of power, the Gemini X96 Flash Node leverages Nimbus Data’s latest 4 TB enterprise flash drives, offering system density that is 30x better and power efficiency that is 35x better than its closest scale-out all-flash competitor.
“Nimbus Data is establishing a leading position in the all-flash array market, providing customers with a true scale-out AFA that delivers greater capacity, lower power and higher performance than alternative platforms,” said Russ Fellows, Senior Partner at Evaluator Group. “The Gemini X-series all-flash array enables data center administrators to linearly scale both performance and capacity by adding more Flash Nodes.”
Unmatched Data Center Efficiency and Performance
The Gemini X-series is the industry’s highest capacity all-flash array, achieving approximately one petabyte (1 PB) raw capacity, or several petabytes of effective capacity after deduplication, compression and thin-provisioning. In terms of footprint, a 10-node Gemini X-series is extremely compact, requiring just 24U of rack space. The Gemini X-series delivers capacity in half a rack what would take nearly five full racks of 15K-rpm disk arrays, a 90-percent reduction. At under six watts of power per terabyte, the Gemini X-series reduces power costs by 95-percent compared to even other all-flash arrays, maximizing rack utilization and enabling customers to defer costly data center expansion.
Unified SAN and NAS for Virtualization, File Storage, and Large Databases
With Nimbus Data’s HALO operating system, the Gemini X-series is the industry’s only unified all-flash array supporting both popular block and file protocols including iSCSI, Fibre Channel, NFS, and SMB, as well as RDMA-based iSER and SRP for ultra-low latency. Multiprotocol support ensures investment protection and future-proof flexibility to meet changing requirements. The Gemini X-series includes snapshots, replication, encryption, deduplication, compression, and comprehensive management tools and APIs at no additional cost. All major virtualization and database platforms are fully supported.
Industry and Customer Validation
With more than 500 systems deployed, 17 awards for innovation, and four consecutive years of revenue and profit growth, Nimbus Data is rapidly emerging as the technology and market leader in flash-based infrastructure. For a closer look at how the Gemini X-series all-flash array compares competitively, visit: http://www.nimbusdata.com/resources/comparisons.php. To learn more about what some of Nimbus Data’s customers have to say about the company’s dedication to innovation, visit: http://www.nimbusdata.com/resources/casestudies.php.
Availability
The Gemini X-series all-flash array will be available to Nimbus Data strategic customers for evaluation in April 2014, with general availability to all customers scheduled for the summer of 2014. For more information, please contact us at info@nimbusdata.com.
About Nimbus Data
Nimbus Data develops an award-winning portfolio of all-flash memory systems and software purpose-built for virtualization, databases, cloud infrastructure, and technical computing. Combining unified multiprotocol storage, comprehensive data management software, and patent-pending hardware architecture, Nimbus Data all-flash systems deliver the industry’s best performance, data center efficiency, scalability, and total cost of ownership. For more information, visit nimbusdata.com, or follow us at twitter.com/nimbusdata.
