General Micro Systems: Hurricane S1U401-SHS 1U Rackmount Secure Storage Server

In a world full of cyber-security dangers that threaten the safety of soldiers and civilians alike, every user and application on the battlefield needs to protect classified data and ensure that critical systems aren’t compromised.

Hurricane S1U401-SHS front and rear

To solve these dual problems, General Micro Systems, Inc. (GMS) announced a thin 1U rackmount secure storage server with removable, hardware-encrypted RAID modules that also serves up to 12/24 trusted and segregated thin clients with the high level of security, encryption and crypto key control available. Equally important is the secure storage server’s performance – the only rugged server to marry five technologies together in one securefast storage system.

The ‘Hurricane’ S1U401-SHS ‘Secure High-Speed Storage’ server is for the Navy’s and Marines’ shipboard op centers and command/control; the Army’s multi-domain battlefield and command networks; and the Air Force’s airborne C4ISR platforms, all of which require a secure and high performing technologies in the smallest yet most rugged form factors possible.

“The Hurricane secure storage server is five exceptional systems in only 1U,” said Ben Sharfi, CEO and chief architect, GMS. “There is dual cartridge RAID mass storage and hardware encryption, plus Intel’s best PCIe Gen 3, 22 core Xeon E5 server CPU, along with a segregated Ethernet thin client LAN server for trusted clients. It’s simply the best of the best for rugged, space-constrained applications, and at a lower cost than many would pay for the just the server alone.“

S1U401-SHS ‘Hurricane’ includes:

1U rackmount flash server that uses 22 core Xeon E5 v4 server CPUs, coupled with nearly 50 PCIe 3 lanes, each operating at 8Gb/s to move data between the drives, CPU, and Ethernet ports with a total system bandwidth of 376GT/s (~0.4Tb/s). This closely-coupled architecture assures a fast direct-to-disk server. To put it in perspective, this system bandwidth is nearly four times faster than the Hurricane’s dual 40GbE ports and 12x/24x 1GbE ports combined.
Encrypted, removable, high-speed storage using direct-to-disk NVMe) drives that connect directly to the CPU via the PCIe 3 fabric. There are two removable, hardware-encrypted, 8-drive redundant RAID cartridges supporting up to 128 TB of mass storage with either SSD or NVMe drives. Each encrypted cartridge can be removed to transport data in the clear to another system. As well, there are four individual drives that support RAID and hardware encryption. The total of twenty drives can be configured for redundancy in RAID groups 0, 1, 5, 10, 50 – or in any combination needed for fault tolerance. Should a drive or group of drives fail-data is protected, encrypted, and recoverable.
Fast Ethernet subsystem, which supports Common Criteria, non-hackable, accredited Forcepoint Trusted Thin Client architecture for 12 or 24 simultaneous, independent, secure isolated clients. A single endpoint at S1U401-SHS connects to multiple networks or clients via virtualization. When users run Forcepoint software, the system meets UCDSMO (Unified Cross Domain Services Management Office), TSABI (Top Secret Sci and Below Interoperability), JIE (Joint Information Environment) and SABI (Secret and Below Interoperability). dual 40GbE ports provide inter-shelf or inter-rack connectivity to other servers or fast LAN pipes.
MIL-SPEC power supplies for AC/DC operation, along with an auxiliary power unit (APU) for battery backup long enough to assure orderly shutdown to prevent data loss.

In addition to the server’s individual features, the overall S1U401-SHS system with RAID drive cartridges is for collecting and storing over 160TB of secure data via twenty encrypted and RAID-capable drives.

“Although S1U401-SHS has 20 SSDs and 14 to 26 Ethernet ports, it is not a NAS (NAS) device, which operates at relatively slow network speeds,” Sharfi added. “Instead, this high speed secure storage server, which has the encrypted drives closely coupled to the CPU, its four times faster than the network connections. This allows the system to act on the data if needed for analysis or processing without slowing down the system throughput.”

Compared to competing storage products such as CheetahRAID, Hurricane S1U401-SHS is a more compact solution, offering more functionality per rack shelf with higher internal total system throughput.

Click to enlarge

S1U401-SHS datasheet