Starline Offering 56Gb IB Storage Solution

With the Infortrend ESDS-4000U RAID system and a host channel adapter (HCA) from Mellanox Technologies, Ltd, data transfer rates of up to 56Gb/s per port are now possible.

The systems provide 256GB RAM, dual-host board controller, 12Gb SAS support and SSD optimization functions. This enables high data throughput and low latency. This makes them a solution for IO/s-intensive applications and also cloud computing, VDI and media editing.

The dual-host board design of the EonStor DS 4000 systems offers performance and versatility for the host connection. The HCAs with Virtual Protocol Interconnect (VPI) support IB and Ethernet connectivities. They offer a powerful and flexible interconnect solutions for PCIe Gen3 servers.

The IB host boards are a communication interface for the dataflow between processors and I/O devices. With the point-to-point connection data can be transmitted and received simultaneously (full duplex). Via metro or WAN technology, greater distances can be bridged. Thus, data centers can efficiently move large amounts of data.

Advantages of storage solution with IB:

Performance: An efficient solution to connect servers and storage for HPC infrastructures
Low-latency: Measured delays of 1µs end to end
High-efficiency: Direct support of RDMA)to reduce latency in flash environments
Cost effectiveness: HCAs and switches are cost-effective and offer a compelling price/performance advantage compared to alternative technologies.
Fabric consolidation: IB connections can be configured either as network or data connection as requested
Reliable connections: Automatic path-failover and multi-pathing functions guarantee highe availability to meet business-critical demands.
High data integrity: By cyclic redundancy checks (CRCs)

RAID system with following features:

Single or dual controller
Up to 2 x IB host boards per controller (each with 2 ports)
HCA of the ConnectX-4 series with VPI
12Gb SAS support
Up to 128GB cache per controller
Up to 2048 LUNs
Reading speed up to 11.000 MB/s
Writing speed up to 5.500 MB/s
Up to 600,000 IO/s
Host boards with FC, SAS and iSCSI can be mixed
Up to 444 drives per Infortrend RAID system
SSD optimizing functions
User-friendly GUI
Supports 2.5 SFF and 3.5 LFF drives
Storage capacity expandable via JBODs

Infortrend EonStor DS series
Mellanox ConnectX-4 VPI IB HCAs

The 56Gb IB storage solution is available from the beginning of November from Starline Computer GmbH that also supples the matching cables and other switches and HCAs from Mellanox.