Imation/Nexsan NST5000 Unified Hybrid Solution Increases Capacity by 400%

Imation Corp. announced the availability of the latest version of its Nexsan NST5000 unified hybrid storage system.

The release addresses the increasing demand for enterprise storage capabilities in SMBs and the need for performance at an affordable price for a primary storage applications including databases, virtual servers and public and private cloud environments.

It is available through the 600-plus Nexsan value-added channel partners worldwide.

The need for long-term data retention and the increased adoption of virtualization and cloud computing are creating more pressure on users to find efficient and reliable storage solutions that can deliver performance, capacity and ease of use. The NST5000 unified hybrid storage system targets that gap by delivering performance without the capacity limitations and high price points of SSD-only solutions. The NST5000 uses the right amount of solid state cache to deliver the performance users need while controlling storage costs. In addition, it leverages Nexsan’s E-Series high density external storage systems for maximum capacity.

The new release of the NST5000 expands on this value to deliver price/performance for demanding workloads.

Key enhancements include:

• A 400% increase in storage capacity to over 5PB – giving users greater enterprise-level capacity to meet their growing data retention needs.
• A 50% decrease in cost for solid-state cache with greater SSD capacity – improving overall price/performance value.
• Streamlined management and administration for larger scale installations and managed service providers – including SNMP support for complex environments, a command line interface (CLI) for advanced users, and an enhanced GUI that is faster and easier to use.
• Support for VMware vStorage API for Array Integration (VAAI) accelerates vSphere server performance by up to 50% – providing hardware acceleration on the NST5000 when integrated into a VMware ESX/ESXi environment. This functionality accelerates the VMware ESX/ESXi host performance by offloading specific virtual machine and storage management operations to the NST5000 which reduces consumption of server CPU and memory and storage fabric bandwidth.

"With this latest release, the NST should get strong consideration from both the mid-range data center all the way up to the largest enterprise," said George Crump, president and founder, Storage Switzerland, an independent analyst firm that recently tested the new offering in its lab. "Not only does it deliver on all the promise of unified storage, it also combines ease of use with all the robust capabilities of an enterprise storage system, addressing a real gap in today’s market."

"Traditionally, our customers have valued the reliability, cost and performance of Nexsan’s solutions," said Dave Hiechel, president and CEO of EAGLE Software Inc., a Nexsan partner and provider of service storage solutions. "With NST5000 hybrid storage, we now introduce Nexsan into data centers with high performance and high reliability computing needs. It offers our customers the speed of solid-state drives at a very competitive price, without giving up enterprise class features. With NST5000, Nexsan has paired enterprise performance and a sophisticated feature set with the simplified manageability and power efficiency that their solutions are known for."

The latest version of the NST5000 comes in large, medium and small configurations to meet varying workload requirements from 8TB to over 5PB of modular capacity. The system is suited for different use cases from virtual servers, desktops and managed services to databases, email and OLTP applications – whether on premise or in the cloud.

"As their long term data retention needs grow, users are being forced to make some very difficult tradeoffs between performance and capacity, unless they have an unlimited budget," said Victoria Grey, SVP of marketing, Nexsan. "The latest release of the NST5000 is specifically targeting this gap in the market – the capacity users need for cost-effective long term data retention, with the performance they need to run their business responsively."

The Nexsan hybrid storage systems combine solid-state technologies, disk storage and software to deliver new levels of performance and capacity at lower cost. These technologies enable organizations to optimize traditional, virtual and cloud computing environments for increased productivity and business agility.

There are more than 11,000 Nexsan customers and more than 33,000 systems deployed since 1999. The storage systems are delivered through a worldwide network of cloud service providers, VADs and solution integrators.