Nimble Storage AF1000 Entry Point to All-Flash With Predictive Flash Array

Nimble Storage, Inc. announced entry point to all-flash storage.

The AF1000 is a full-featured all-flash array that offers scalability, allowing customers to start small and scale non-disruptively up to 8PB at low cost.

The company also introduced a generation of Adaptive Flash Arrays with improved price-performance and price-capacity benefits across the portfolio. All firm’s arrays include InfoSight Predictive Analytics to predict and prevent storage and non-storage issues across the infrastructure stack.

“Mid-size and large enterprises love the performance and availability of the all-flash arrays we released in February. However, many smaller organizations want all-flash at a lower entry point, without sacrificing features and scalability,” said Ajay Singh, VP, product management, Nimble. “The new Nimble All Flash array makes it affordable for organizations of any size to benefit from an all-flash platform with the same capabilities and scalability found in high-end all-flash arrays. The AF1000 is an ‘entry-level’ all-flash array without limitations.“

The starting point for an AF1000 has up to 20TB effective capacity and is expandable up to 165TB effective capacity in 4U. It can also scale-up and scale-out non-disruptively to achieve over 1.2 million IO/s and 8PB of all-flash capacity. Because every firm’s All Flash and Adaptive Flash array runs the same NimbleOS, management and functionality is identical and arrays of any type can be clustered and managed as a single entity in a Unified Flash Fabric. Customers who use all-flash for primary applications can leverage Adaptive Flash for backup, DR, and archival at a third of the cost of all-flash.

New gen of Adaptive Flash Arrays – Expanding price-performance advantage
CS-Series Adaptive Flash arrays deliver flexible performance and capacity for mixed mainstream workloads at one-third the TCO of legacy hybrid arrays. Built with the same NimbleOS, they can be clustered with firm’s all-flash arrays and managed as a single entity in a Unified Flash Fabric. In this way, applications can be transparently migrated between all-flash and Adaptive Flash.

The portfolio consists of the CS1000, CS3000, CS5000 and CS7000 and delivers up to 2X performance improvement and 40% lower cost of capacity over the previous generation of Adaptive Flash arrays. The high-end CS7000 array achieves up to 230,000 IO/s and scales to over 2.4PB of effective capacity. Firm’s all-flash arrays already benefit from inline variable block deduplication and compression. Deduplication is planned for the Adaptive Flash arrays in a future release at no cost for existing customers who maintain an active support contract.

The Adaptive Flash arrays are designed to suit a range of primary applications. They can also be built in cost-optimized configurations to achieve a preferred platform for secondary storage. When primary applications are on a firm’s all-flash array, an Adaptive Flash array can be used for backup, DR and archival at a third of the cost of All Flash. The new generation of Adaptive Flash arrays extend this capability further by delivering better price-performance for these secondary workloads.

Every company’s array includes InfoSight Predictive Analytics to predict and prevent issues across the infrastructure stack. The customer support experience is transformed because tasks handled by traditional level one and two support staff are automated. The firm’s support organization is made up entirely of level three experts that answer calls in less than a minute on average. The most complex issues are rapidly resolved because InfoSight has the information required to solve the problem.

Timeless guarantee applied to entire predictive flash platform
Timeless Storage is a business model built on trust and transparency. Every company’s array comes with all-inclusive software licensing, guaranteed flat support pricing for the life of the product, no forklift upgrades and a seven-year lifespan on SSDs. There is also an option where after three years, a customer receives a free new controller that is guaranteed to be at least 25% faster when they renew support for an additional three years.

The Predictive Flash arrays announced are available.

The AF1000 MSRP starts under $40,000 including three years of support.

Resources:
Report: Mind the Gap: How Application Delays Affect Company Performance (registration required)
Research Report: Can Machine Learning Prevent Application Downtime? (registration required)