Nimble Storage AF1000
Predictive All Flash Storage for the Modern Data Center

Features and Benefits:

Absolute Performance to Power the Flash Data Center

Screaming Storage Performance

Sustain 1.2M+ IOPS with consistent sub-ms response time and never worry about performance again.

Scale-to-Fit

Scale-up seamlessly to grow the performance and capacity of an array. Scale-out non-disruptively to over 8PB in a cluster that's managed as one.

Application Optimized

Integrated and certified with industry-leading applications to streamline deployment and simplify management. No need for manual application performance tuning.

Quality of Service

Auto QoS prevents noisy neighbor issues. QoS Limits allow you to set explicit IOPS and/or bandwidth limits.

Cloud Ready

Nimble arrays are Cloud Ready, giving you the flexibility to create a multicloud environment. Easily migrate data between on-premise flash arrays and the public cloud with Nimble Cloud Volumes.

Breaking the limits of All-Flash scalability

33% to 66% Lower TCO

20% More Capacity

Delivers 20% more usable flash capacity through a highly efficient logging filesystem that is combined with advanced flash endurance management.

Designed for 3D-NAND

Advanced Flash Endurance Management extends flash lifespan and requires less overhead, driving down cost and data center footprint.

Exceptional Data Reduction

With Nimble, less is more. Buy up to 80% less storage for the same amount of data. That's the miracle of Nimble variable-block deduplication and compression.

Backup at One-Third the Cost

Place primary workloads on All-Flash, and use Adaptive Flash arrays for backup, DR, Dev/Test and archival at a third of the cost of All Flash.

Dramatic Data Center Footprint and TCO Reduction

Data Protection at One Third the Cost

Using flash for backup, DR and archival can sometimes be cost-prohibitive. That's why Nimble also allows its cost-optimized Adaptive Flash arrays to be used for backup, DR, Dev/Test and archival at a third of the cost of All Flash. And since both primary and secondary arrays share common data services, you'll get identical functionality and user experience.

Absolute Resiliency

Six 9s' Measured Availability

Non-stop availability delivers 99.9999% measured availability through predictive analytics and ‘no single point of failure’ hardware and software design.

Triple+ Parity RAID

Tolerate 3 simultaneous drive failures plus additional protection from intra-drive parity and integrated sparing. This takes RAID protection to a level never seen before in All Flash arrays.

SmartSecure Encryption

Application-granular, FIPS-certified encryption and secure data shredding provides end-to-end security for data at rest and on-the-wire when replicated offsite.

Effortless Management

Storage is pre-configured and optimized for applications out-of-the-box. Tasks such as selecting RAID-level, media layout, aggregations and reserves are not required. Initial setup and configuration can be completed within two hours.

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.

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.

Watch CASL Architecture Deep Dive
Storage architect Devin Hamilton provides an in-depth look at Nimble’s core architecture. (74:45)

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.
• Zero-Copy Clones
  Nimble Storage arrays can create snapshot-based read/writeable clones of existing volumes instantly. These clones benefit from fast read and write performance, making them ideal for demanding applications such as VDI or test/development.

Scalable Storage Capacity and Performance

Scale-to-Fit

3-Minute Video: Scale-to-Fit with Nimble

With Nimble Storage's Adaptive Flash platform, it is easy to accommodate application growth by scaling performance, capacity, or both—efficiently and non-disruptively. While the CASL architecture enables seamless, independent scaling, InfoSight's powerful deep-data analytics deliver precise guidance on the optimal scaling approach to fit the requiremets of critical applications.

With the Adaptive Flash platform, organizations can:

• Flexibly scale flash to accomodate a wide variety of application working sets
• Scale up performance by upgrading compute for greater throughput and IOPS
• Scale capacity by adding additional HDDs or expansion shelves
• Scale capacity and performance together by clustering any combination of Nimble Storage arrays

Scale Out

Nimble Storage's Adaptive Flash platform features a scale-out architecture that makes it easy to scale capacity and performance beyond the physical limitations of a single array. Any combination of Nimble Storage CS-Series arrays can be seamlessly configured into a storage cluster that accomodates growing business-critical workloads and supports new ones, without complicating storage management by creating additional silos or breaking the budget with forklift upgrades. Nimble Storage's innovative approach to scale-out storage dramatically simplifies configuration, upgrades, and management.

With Nimble Storage scale-out you get:

• Single-console management of all storage hardware resources as a single entity
• Dynamic load balancing to eliminate performance hot spots
• Multi-array data striping, enabling any application to fully leverage the collective hardware resources of the scale-out group
• Seamless reconfiguration and hardware refreshes, without downtime
• Flexible configuration of any combination of Nimble Storage arrays, maximizing storage ROI

Specifications:

Notes:

1. Scale-out configuration consists of 4x AF9000 arrays, each with two all flash shelves.
2. Raw, usable and effective capacities are shown in TB (10¹² bytes) and TiB (2⁴⁰ bytes). Usable and effective capacities exclude space used for parity, spares, and system overhead.
3. Effective capacity is the capacity of the base array and maximum number of expansion shelves. Assumes data reduction of five to one from deduplication and compression.
4. Onboard ports are 10GbaseT. Optional ports are: 1GbaseT, 10GbaseT or 10GbE SFP+
5. Each shelf consists of up to 48 SSDs. SSDs can be 240GB, 480GB, 960GB, 1.92TB or 3.84TB raw capacity.

* Learn More:
Video: Nimble Storage Overview Whiteboard

Views:

Front View

Front Open View

Back View

Documentation:

Download Nimble Storage All-Flash Array Datasheet (PDF).

Download Nimble Storage Product Brief Datasheet (PDF).

Download Nimble Storage Technology & Features Primer Datasheet (PDF).

Download White Paper: Redefining Flash Storage (PDF).

Download White Paper: Scale-to-Fit Storage (PDF).