Nexsan Unity4000: Mid-Range Hybrid Storage

Nexsan Unity4000 | Mid-Range Hybrid Storage Hardware | ISSI

The mid-range storage system you’ve been waiting for, now with Fibre. If you prefer Fibre Channel to other SAN protocols, this scalable storage is built for you. Nexsan Unity4000 expands the availability of fault-tolerant FASTier® DRAM caching with both Fibre Channel and iSCSI connectivity, and puts them in reach of mid-range businesses.

EFFICIENT

FASTier

Intelligent, self-tuning hybrid caching capability that uses a scalable pool of cache memory comprised of both high-speed memory and flash technologies to create a more efficient hybrid storage solution. DRAM and Flash SSD technology is used to accelerate read and write IOPS and throughput. FASTier caching works transparently so there is no administration burden to turbo-charge I/O performance and handle the constant growth of mixed applications in your environment. FASTier caching is especially useful for random I/O workloads such as databases or for VMware, Xen or Hyper-V environments.

Inline Compression

As data is written, Unity compresses data prior to it being written to the RAID volume. This reduces the amount of data written to SSD cache or HDD storage media, and, in-turn shrinks the total storage capacity requirements, datacenter footprint and improves storage system performance. Unity Inline Compression can be set on a per volume basis and is transparent operation.

AutoMAID® Power Management

Flexible power management allows you to configure each RAID set to progress into deeper levels of sleep when they have not been accessed for a specified period of time. There are five levels of power management to balance power savings and responsiveness for varying applications. No changes need to be made to applications to benefit from AutoMAID. Unity4000 delivers up to 87% reduction in power and cooling, which lowers operating expenses and extend the overall life of the system.

FLEXIBLE

Three-Dimensional Scaling

Unity4000 scales capacity and performance across three dimensions with each dimension carrying its own level of flexibility.

  • Capacity is scaled by adding additional Unity storage modules. Unity storage modules come in different form factors to address different organizational needs. Unity storage module choices include 18, 32, 48 and 60 drive high-density storage form factors. Storage capacity can be comprised of solid-state drives or hard disk drives.
  • Storage Processing is scaled with each new Unity storage module head. Each Unity storage module head has its own redundant RAID and I/O processing capabilities offloading this work from the Unity controllers. As you add Unity storage module heads, you are adding more RAID and I/O processing.
  • FASTier: caching is Unity’s intelligent, self-tuning hybrid caching capability that uses a scalable pool of cache memory comprised of both high-speed memory and flash technologies to create a more efficient hybrid storage solution. FASTier provides increased performance for mixed application workload environments over traditional caching techniques.

Unified

In a single solution, Unity4000 provides CIFS, NFS and FTP file sharing protocols for enterprise NAS file sharing as well as FC and iSCSI SAN block storage protocol for server volume sharing.

AVAILABLE

High Availability

Unity4000 includes redundant controllers, data paths, storage module controllers and power supplies to keep your applications and users productive. User selected RAID protection levels include 10, 5 and 6. Cache protection options ensure that your data is safe even if the power goes out.

Business Continuity

  • Synchronous Mirroring: want to increase your application system availability a step further? Unity offers another level of data availability within the system with synchronous mirroring between RAID volumes located across storage modules. With synchronous mirroring your applications run continuously even in the event of an entire storage module or its expansion were to fail.
  • Asynchronous Replication: Unity4000 also provides the ability for you to replicate your most mission and business critical data to another system across an IP network that is geographically dispersed making your data available to you in the event you need to recover from a site disaster.

Contact us for a consultation or Nexsan Unity4000 archival data storage quote