Nimble Storage CS300 Adaptive Flash Array Device

Description

Nimble Storage is the technology leader in flash storage solutions.

The Power of One: A Single Storage Consolidation Platform

Most storage architectures were engineered to deliver just a single functional benefit: high performance or high capacity.

The Nimble Storage Adaptive Flash platform is transforming this land of storage silos.Enterprises can use a single architectural approach to cater dynamically to varying workloads’ needs for performance and capacity, as well as data protection.

Only Nimble offers the Power of One: gain the benefits of consolidation, without compromising the ability to deliver the service levels required for specific workloads.

IT organizations that use the Nimble Storage Adaptive Flash platform can predict, manage, and deliver the storage that is required to optimize applications and workloads across the enterprise.

By contrast, competitors’ flash storage offerings are either one-trick ponies or stubborn mules. Both have ravenous appetites.

• Existing flash-only offerings deliver on raw performance, but are limited in their ability to linearly scale performance with capacity, both up and out. For mainstream enterprise applications that need performance and capacity, they are cost prohibitive. For performance-intensive applications, they are overkill for backup copies, application test and development, and disaster recovery copies. The result: storage silos that are constricted in scale and very costly.
• Legacy hard disk architectures with flash added on as a tier are inefficient at simultaneously optimizing performance and capacity. They force IT to struggle and add costs to ensure that the right data is in the right tier at the right time. They also require complex data and storage management tools. The results: runaway operating and capital costs, spiraling complexity, and storage silo sprawl.

CASL Architecture

Nimble Storage solutions are built on its patented Cache Accelerated Sequential Layout (CASL™) architecture. CASL leverages the unique properties of flash and disk to deliver high performance and capacity – all within a dramatically small footprint.CASL and InfoSight™ form the foundation of the Adaptive Flash platform, which allows for the dynamic and intelligent deployment of storage resources to meet the growing demands of business-critical applications.

Key Innovations from CASL

• Flexible Flash Scaling
  Flexibly scale flash to satisfy the changing performance demands of today’s business-critical applications.
• Adaptive Flash Service Levels
  Tailor the amount of flash allocated to workloads on a per-volume basis. Assign one of three flash service levels (All Flash, Auto Flash and No Flash) to accommodate latency-sensitive critical applications to capacity-optimized applications, for management efficiency and optimal TCO.
• Dynamic Flash-Based Read Caching
  CASL caches “hot” active data onto SSD in real time—without the need to set complex policies. This way it can instantly respond to read requests—as much as 10X faster than traditional bolt-on or tiered approach to flash.
• Write-Optimized Data Layout
  CASL collects or coalesces random writes, compresses them, and writes them sequentially to disks. This results in write operations that are as much as 100x faster than traditional disk-based storage.
• Inline Compression
  CASL compresses data as it is written to the array with no performance impact. It takes advantage of efficient variable block compression and multicore processors. A recent measurement of our installed base shows average compression rates from 30 to 75 percent for a variety of workloads.
• Scale-to-Fit Flexibility
  CASL allows for the non-disruptive and independent scaling of performance and capacity. This is accomplished by either upgrading the storage controller (compute) for higher throughput, moving to larger flash SSD (cache) to accommodate more active data, or by adding storage shelves to boost capacity. This flexible scaling eliminates the need for disruptive forklift upgrades.
• Scale Out
  Scale capacity and performance beyond the physical limitations of a single array by seamlessly clustering any combination of Nimble Storage hybrid arrays. Eliminate capacity silos and performance hotspots, and easily manage all hardware resources across the cluster as a single storage entity.
• Snapshots and Integrated Data Protection
  CASL can take thousands of point-in-time instant snapshots of volumes by creating a copy of the volumes’ indices. Any updates to existing data or new data written to a volume are redirected to free space (optimized by CASL’s unique data layout). This means there is no performance impact due to snapshots and snapshots take little incremental space as only changes are maintained. This also simplifies restoring snapshots, as no data needs to be copied.
• Efficient Replication
  Nimble Storage efficiently replicates data to another array by transferring compressed, block-level changes only. These remote copies can be made active if the primary array becomes unavailable. This makes deploying disaster data recovery easy and affordable – especially over a WAN to a remote array where bandwidth is limited.

Nimble Storage InfoSight:

Defining a New Storage Experience

Confidently meet your workload SLAs with actionable intelligence to preempt issues, achieve peak storage health, and forecast and manage future growth.

Nimble Storage customers enjoy an entirely unique storage lifecycle management experience, driven by powerful, sophisticated data analytics and cloud connectivity. This experience is centered around Nimble Storage InfoSight™ which integrates, automates, and substantially simplifies storage administrative tasks, ensuring the optimal health of all Nimble Storage arrays.

InfoSight, an integral part of Nimble’s Adaptive Flash platform, ensures the peak health of storage infrastructure by identifying problems, and offering solutions, in real time. InfoSight provides expert guidance for deploying the right balance of enterprise storage resources — dynamically and intelligently — to satisfy the changing demands of business-critical applications.

InfoSight enables organizations to:

• Analyze storage performance and accurately diagnose and preempt issues in real-time to maintain peak storage health
• Easily meet changing SLAs on-the-fly with expert guidance on storage resource planning
• Enhance performance and latency visibility in heavily-virtualized VMware environments
• Proactively identify and resolve VM resource contention issues and avoid costly unnecessary storage upgrades
• Streamline storage management and reporting via a single cloud-connected portal for enhanced operational efficiency and productivity

InfoSight consists of:

• The InfoSight Engine: A data collection and analysis engine comprised of powerful analytics, system modeling capabilities, and predictive algorithms.
• The InfoSight Portal: A secure online portal which serves as a window into the InfoSight Engine.
• Proactive Wellness: Proactive alerts for system health, performance, and protection gaps. Performance correlation analytics quickly identify leading factors contributing to performance or latency issues.

This “deep data” approach to customer support delivers storage health insights that can be leveraged to streamline maintenance by enabling granular alerting, accurate forecasting, and a level of overall storage health insight that vastly improves productivity and optimizes system availability.

InfoSight Benefits:

• Manageability: InfoSight is cloud-based, so agents or data collection infrastructure do not have to be installed in the datacenter. All updates are instantly available.
• Usability: InfoSight enables proactive system health and support. Insightful and actionable information is presented through intuitive dashboards, including performance correlation analytics.
• Accessibility: InfoSight can be accessed from anywhere, anytime, on any device. One-click reporting and export capabilities make it the simplest way to monitor and manage Nimble Storage environments. Registered Nimble resellers can also request access to their customers’ InfoSight portals, allowing them to be more proactive.