Nexsan NST5000 Gives Storage Industry Seal of Approval Equivalent to eMLC Drives
Flash memory is fundamentally changing the metrics around how performance on storage arrays is measured with IOPs reaching into the tens or hundreds of thousands - even over a million in some tests. Despite these results, many organizations remain reticent to use solid state drives (SSDs) because of persistent questions about their reliability, especially around eMLC drives. These concerns are largely put to rest as the inclusion of eMLC drives in the new Nexsan NST5000 unified hybrid storage array gives these drives the storage industry's equivalent of a seal of approval.
Delivering high levels of product reliability and stability have always been top of mind at Nexsan (now a part of Imation.) While this statement is not meant to diminish the products offered by competitors, Nexsan has always put a particular emphasis on producing highly reliable storage arrays.
This is evidenced by its arrays earning top marks in the Hardware category in the past two DCIG Midrange Array Buyer's Guides. Underscoring the impressiveness of this accomplishment, Nexsan got its start building reliable storage arrays using SATA drives that were at the time largely viewed as "consumer grade" so it had to take extra steps to deliver a storage array that used these drives and was still considered "reliable."
Making its challenge particularly daunting was that at the time SATA drives were deemed "unreliable." It was thanks in large part to the efforts of Nexsan that SATA drives earned a reputation for being reliable, got the enterprise seal of approval and are now found on more storage arrays than not.
Fast forward to today's release of the Nexsan NST5000 line of unified hybrid storage arrays. Here again Nexsan is doing something very similar with eMLC drives that partially suffer from the same stigma as SATA drives did almost a decade ago.
eMLC drives are the "enterprise" version of multi-level cells (MLC) SSDs that are most often used in the consumer space as MLC drives are designed to be lower cost than enterprise single-level cell (SLC) SSDs but they are also less reliable. The "e" or "enterprise" in the eMLC naming convention is to suggest these are on par with SLC-based SSDs in terms of their reliability but available at a lower cost (roughly half.)
Nexsan's inclusion of the eMLC drives in its new NST5000 unified storage array suggests that the time for eMLC to be classified as "enterprise ready" has finally arrived.
In discussing this topic with Nexsan's Chief Strategy Officer, George Symons, Nexsan has been testing the quality and reliability of eMLC with multiple providers. He says, "The reliability of eMLC SSDs is absolutely there - or at least the ones we use in the NST5000. They get us to the same level of reliability that the SLC drives offer."
Making this combination particular powerful on the NST5000 is that by using eMLC drives in conjunction with SATA drives, organizations get the higher levels of performance that they need (up to 54,000 IOPS) at a price of about 40 cents per GB. This represents a per GB price reduction of more than 33% from its prior generation of NST models with increases in performance while maintaining Nexsan's historically high standards for product reliability.
Two other factors also make this release of the NST5000 notable:
Nexsan's inclusion of eMLC in in the NST5000 unified hybrid storage array largely signifies that eMLC has come of age and is ready for broader adoption in enterprise accounts. Further, by Nexsan making all of its management available via CLI, it suggests that Nexsan is moving into more large enterprise accounts and is becoming a preferred solution for those data centers and MSPs that want a storage array that performs well while also being cost-effective, reliable, and easy to manage in virtualized environments.
Delivering high levels of product reliability and stability have always been top of mind at Nexsan (now a part of Imation.) While this statement is not meant to diminish the products offered by competitors, Nexsan has always put a particular emphasis on producing highly reliable storage arrays.
This is evidenced by its arrays earning top marks in the Hardware category in the past two DCIG Midrange Array Buyer's Guides. Underscoring the impressiveness of this accomplishment, Nexsan got its start building reliable storage arrays using SATA drives that were at the time largely viewed as "consumer grade" so it had to take extra steps to deliver a storage array that used these drives and was still considered "reliable."
Making its challenge particularly daunting was that at the time SATA drives were deemed "unreliable." It was thanks in large part to the efforts of Nexsan that SATA drives earned a reputation for being reliable, got the enterprise seal of approval and are now found on more storage arrays than not.
Fast forward to today's release of the Nexsan NST5000 line of unified hybrid storage arrays. Here again Nexsan is doing something very similar with eMLC drives that partially suffer from the same stigma as SATA drives did almost a decade ago.
eMLC drives are the "enterprise" version of multi-level cells (MLC) SSDs that are most often used in the consumer space as MLC drives are designed to be lower cost than enterprise single-level cell (SLC) SSDs but they are also less reliable. The "e" or "enterprise" in the eMLC naming convention is to suggest these are on par with SLC-based SSDs in terms of their reliability but available at a lower cost (roughly half.)
Nexsan's inclusion of the eMLC drives in its new NST5000 unified storage array suggests that the time for eMLC to be classified as "enterprise ready" has finally arrived.
In discussing this topic with Nexsan's Chief Strategy Officer, George Symons, Nexsan has been testing the quality and reliability of eMLC with multiple providers. He says, "The reliability of eMLC SSDs is absolutely there - or at least the ones we use in the NST5000. They get us to the same level of reliability that the SLC drives offer."
Making this combination particular powerful on the NST5000 is that by using eMLC drives in conjunction with SATA drives, organizations get the higher levels of performance that they need (up to 54,000 IOPS) at a price of about 40 cents per GB. This represents a per GB price reduction of more than 33% from its prior generation of NST models with increases in performance while maintaining Nexsan's historically high standards for product reliability.
Two other factors also make this release of the NST5000 notable:
- Support for VMware vSphere APIs for Array Integration (VAAI). VAAI support is becoming a prerequisite for any storage array being deployed in environments where VMware is used. The addition of this functionality to the NST5000 coupled with its increased performance and lower cost make this storage array a very compelling solution for these environments.
- All management features available via CLI. One of the most interesting trends in the development of storage arrays over the last year or so has been the re-emergence of using command line interfaces (CLIs) to manage storage arrays. This is being driven in large part by more data centers and managed service providers (MSPs) looking to automate the management of their hardware infrastructure using some variation of datacenter infrastructure management (DCIM) software. By Nexsan making all of its management features now available through its CLI, data centers and MSPs may now look to automate the management of the NST5000.
Nexsan's inclusion of eMLC in in the NST5000 unified hybrid storage array largely signifies that eMLC has come of age and is ready for broader adoption in enterprise accounts. Further, by Nexsan making all of its management available via CLI, it suggests that Nexsan is moving into more large enterprise accounts and is becoming a preferred solution for those data centers and MSPs that want a storage array that performs well while also being cost-effective, reliable, and easy to manage in virtualized environments.
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