Winchester Systems Shipping Auto-Tiering Hybrid Flash Arrays

Winchester Systems Inc., a storage infrastructure provider to military and commercial systems integrators and service/solution providers, has upgraded its FlashDisk line of storage systems.

FX-2U24

The new FlashDisk FX adds ‘Hybrid’ flash capability – seamlessly combining flash-based SSD performance with the economical capacity of HDDs – and supports up to 16 host ports and over 2PB of capacity using 360 6TB HDDs.

FlashDisk FX Hybrid Flash support is enabled using Automated Tiered-Storage Pools, grouping SSD and HDD drive types into two tiers within a virtualized storage pool. FlashDisk controllers send write transactions to blocks in the higher-performing tier, and monitor the access frequency and age of each data block, automatically migrating hot or cold data to the appropriate tier. Storage tiers can also be defined based on other drive types or on different RAID levels.

Each FlashDisk FX controller includes eight built-in 1GbE iSCSI ports, with additional 1GbE or 10GbE iSCSI, 8Gb or 16Gb FC, or 6Gb SAS host ports provided via a hardware module that plugs onto the controller motherboard. This modular design makes it easy to tailor FlashDisk FX to suit specific customer-solution requirements. It also enables field upgrades: customers can purchase a FlashDisk FX system with 1GbE iSCSI ports, for example, and later upgrade it to 10GbE iSCSI or 16Gb FC when they need faster connectivity.

New FlashDisk FX models include:

• FlashDisk FX-2U12: up to twelve 3.5-inch disks per drive shelf, delivering up to 5,000 MB/s and over 1 million IO/s.
• FlashDisk FX-3U16: up to sixteen 3.5-inch disks per drive shelf, delivering up to 5,500 MB/s and over 1.2 million IO/s.
• FlashDisk FX-2U24: up to twenty-four 2.5-inch disks per drive shelf, delivering up to 5,200MB/s and over 1.4 million IO/s.

“For over three decades, Winchester Systems has consistently provided high-value storage for much less than competing products with similar performance, capability and scale,” said Ted Gumer, VP sales and business development, Winchester Systems. “Adding hybrid flash and Automated Storage Tiers to other must-have enterprise features such as snapshots, thin provisioning, remote replication, and online capacity expansion makes FlashDisk FX as compelling as ever to systems integrators, solution providers, and end-user customers.”

The new FlashDisk FX systems are available. Winchester Systems also offers storage-infrastructure consulting, on-site installation and service spares, and 24×7 product service and support for FlashDisk worldwide.