Nimble Storage Shatters All Flash Scalability and Effective Capacity Barriers

Nimble Storage, Inc. announced a series of innovations including the ability to scale all flash array effective capacity to new heights across a series of storage all flash arrays powered by Samsung 3D V-NAND-based SSDs.

All Flash arrays

Enterprise IT organizations can experience absolute performance that scales to accelerate all applications across the enterprise and deliver data velocity to end users.

AF-Series All Flash Arrays support Samsung 4TB SSDs
The AF9000 All Flash array, the flagship model in the all AF-Series, scales capacity to new heights with up to 553TB of raw capacity in a 12U configuration with a single array and two expansion shelves. The AF9000, a full-featured all flash array, delivers an average de-duplication and compression ratio of 5-to-1, and up to 2.0PB of effective capacity in a 12U configuration and up to 8.2PB in a 4-node scale-out configuration. These advances in all flash array scalability and data reduction capability represent a step forward in effective capacity scale in comparison to competitive offerings.

“With today’s announcements we are putting the storage industry on notice, leapfrogging previous scalability limitations and redefining customer expectations of all flash storage systems,” said Ajay Singh, VP, product management, Nimble. “Starting today, a Nimble Storage All Flash array scale-out cluster, managed as a single entity, can non-disruptively scale to over 8PB of effective capacity, delivering more than 1.2 million IO/s at less than 1ms response time. And with advanced data reduction capabilities that include inline variable block deduplication and compression, enterprise IT organizations can scale performance and capacity independently and non-disruptively today and well into the future.“

Hot swappable dual flash carrier doubles capacity
The 4U AF-Series arrays and expansion shelves are equipped with 24 SSD slots. When configured with the Dual-Flash Carrier (DFC), the capacity of each slot is doubled to a total of 48 SSDs per array and expansion shelf. Unlike competing all flash arrays, each individual SSD is hot swappable and can be installed or removed from the DFC independently, streamlining capacity scale while maintaining non-stop availability. The company has qualified five Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. ‘ PM863 SSDs, ranging in capacity from 240GB to 4TB, through an enterprise-grade Quality Assurance (QA) process to validate compatibility and interoperability across the AF-Series spanning the AF3000, AF5000, AF7000 and AF9000.

3D V-NAND SSDs optimized for enterprise workloads
The all flash arrays are designed to take advantage of the 3D V-NAND innovations of the PM863 SSDs. Based on the advanced flash controllers, they provide twice the write endurance, require half the power and deliver 20% increased write performance compared to planar MLC-based SSDs. These high-density 2.5-inch standard form factor SSDs rely on a single PCB in a 7mm form factor to provide a substantial cost advantage over competing SSD designs that use multiple PCBs in a larger 15mm form factor.

Building upon Samsung V-NAND innovations, the all flash arrays provide flash endurance software, Triple+Parity RAID and integrated sparing to extend flash lifespan and reduce overhead inefficiencies, thereby enabling the firm to scale all flash array and cluster effective capacity beyond the limitations of other all flash arrays.

“As an industry pioneer and leader in advanced SSD technologies, we’re excited to join with innovative flash companies like Nimble to deliver the very latest storage innovations to our mutual customers,” said Jim Elliott, VP, memory marketing, Samsung Electronics “Together we’re delivering a powerful combination of SSD innovations to enable Enterprise IT organizations to accelerate applications running across their data centers while providing solid investment protection and outstanding TCO.“