Texas Memory: 1U, 5TB of SLC SSD, 5GB/s Maximum Bandwidth

Texas Memory Systems, Inc. (TMS) introduced its second RamSan Series-7 system: the 1U rackmount RamSan-710.

Powered by the new Series-7 Flash Controller with 32nm SLC Flash from Toshiba, the RamSan-710 is a fast (5 GB/s) 1U shared storage system with four 8-Gb Fibre Channel or QDR InfiniBand ports. The RamSan-710 turbocharges datacentres with minimal impact on power and space.

The Series-7 Flash Controller that powers the RamSan-710 is based on Xilinx FPGAs and an embedded PowerPC core. It manages Flash, corrects faults, tracks performance, and logs operational data.

Incorporating patented Variable Stripe RAID (VSR) technology, standard chip-level RAID, and an ECC algorithm, the Series-7 Flash Controller provides the RamSan-710 with an expected lifespan of 10 years. The Series-7 Flash Controller is exclusively available in the RamSan-710 and other Texas Memory Systems Series-7 products.

Like previous RamSan designs, the RamSan-710 provides an integrated storage platform inside the box. The RamSan-710 includes 21 Flash boards, 2 high-bandwidth I/O modules (2 ports each), 1 management Ethernet port, and a cross-bar switch that connects everything for smooth data flow through the system. These components combine to optimise the RamSan-710 bandwidth, IOPS, latency, and reliability.

"Flash storage is no longer just a tool for those in the rarified IT atmosphere, but is rapidly becoming a standard real-world enabler of both better performance and improved economics," said Mark Peters, Senior Analyst at the Enterprise Strategy Group. "Texas Memory brings decades of experience to this market, together with an ability – exemplified by this new RamSan-710 – to design and package products to fulfill the needs of regular, yet very demanding, IT shops that require affordable and easy IO turbo-charging."

IT managers are plagued with the daunting task of increasing storage efficiency by extracting the most performance out of a fixed space. The RamSan-710 addresses this need, delivering 5 GB/s in only 1U of space. One or more units integrate into mixed storage infrastructures and can be monitored and managed through a common framework. The RamSan-710 is the storage solution for high bandwidth applications like data warehousing, scientific and high performance computing (HPC), online transaction processing (OLTP), data acquisition, batch processing, and video editing.

"The RamSan-710 establishes new capacity and performance standards for our space-constrained customer base," said Dan Scheel, President of Texas Memory Systems. "It fills the gap between our new RamSan-70 PCIe card and our RamSan-630 3U system."

The RamSan-710 is scheduled for delivery in 4-8 weeks.