Nimble Storage CS1000
Flash Performance for Mixed and Mainstream Workloads

Features and Benefits:

Flash Performance for Primary and Secondary Workloads

Speed with Efficiency

Purpose-built flash architecture delivers sub-millisecond response time with unparalleled efficiency. And it's five times faster than the competition.

Scale-to-Fit

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

Adaptive Service Levels

Assign, or change, the service level of any volume at the click of a button. Auto Flash, All Flash or Minimal Flash.

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.

66% Lower TCO than other Hybrid solutions

Achieve an All Flash experience with 66% lower TCO and one-fifth the footprint of legacy hybrid storage.

Unconstrained By Disk

Defy physics and write to disk at flash speed through write serialization. This allows high-density low-RPM drives to be used without performance penalty.

Ground-up Flash Design

Dynamic flash cache delivers flash performance even as workloads change. Leverages flash 10x more efficiently than tiered hybrid systems.

Always-on Data Reduction

Variable-block compression, zero pattern elimination, thin provisioning and zero-copy clones deliver up to 2-3X space savings without performance penalty.

Dramatic Data Center Footprint and TCO Reduction

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.

Adaptive Flash Platform:

A Single Storage Architecture for All Your Critical Applications

The Nimble Storage Adaptive Flash platform enables enterprise IT organizations to implement a single architectural approach to dynamically cater to the needs of varying workloads. Within this single platform, customers can apply multiple service levels to address a wide range of enterprise applications. Assign an All Flash service level for demanding applications requiring deterministic low latency, while simultaneously applying an Auto Flash service level which more efficiently uses flash resources to cater to the majority of mainstream applications that require a balance of high performance and capacity. For applications with lower performance requirements, the No Flash service level optimizes for cost of capacity.

Adaptive Flash is the only storage platform that optimizes across performance, capacity, data protection, and reliability within a dramatically smaller footprint.

Adaptive Flash is built upon Nimble's CASL™ architecture, and InfoSight™, the company's cloud-connected management system. CASL scales performance and capacity seamlessly and independently. InfoSight leverages the power of deep data analytics to provide customers with precise guidance on the optimal approach to scaling flash, CPU, and capacity around changing application needs, while ensuring peak storage health.

Interactive Solutions Tour: Watch 3D Demo

Key Benefits

• Eliminate silos of storage through the ability to offer multiple storage service levels within the same architecture, from All Flash to hybrid Auto Flash or even No Flash
• Grow seamlessly by scaling compute, cache, or capacity independently and non-disruptively
• Minimize risk with integrated snapshots and consistent backups, SmartSecure™ encryption, and efficient replication for disaster recovery
• Improve IT productivity with push-button deployment and the proactive, analytics based support of InfoSight
• Take a flexible, building-block approach to achieving Cloud scale

Here are some of the key features that come standard in a Nimble Storage array:

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. CS1000, CS3000, and CS5000 support scale up to any model within the CS family. CS1000H supports scale up to the CS3000H.
2. The CS1000H consists of up to 22 HDDs and 2 DFCs (Dual Flash Carriers). All other CS Series models consists of up to 21 HDD drives and 3 DFCs (holding up to 6 SSDs).
3. Scale-out configuration consists of 4x CS7000 arrays, each with six maximum capacity expansion shelves.
4. Raw, usable, and effective capacities are shown in TB (10^12) and TiB (2^40 bytes). Usable and effective capacities take into account space used for parity, spares, SSD cache, and system overhead.
5. Effective capacity is a range from minimum in the base array to maximum in the array plus expansion shelves. Assumes data reduction of two to one (2X) from compression.
6. Each array controller has 2x 10GbE ports built in. Optional ports are 1GbaseT, 10GbaseT or 10GbE SFP+.
7. The ES2-AFS2 (ES2-All Flash for Hybrid) accommodates up to 48 SSDs, which can be populated in packs of 4 at a time.
8. Weight for the CS1000H is 90 lbs. / 41kg
9. When attached to a CS1000H, capacity is 16-167 / 14-152

* Learn More:
Video: Nimble Storage Overview Whiteboard

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Front View

Front Open View

Back View

Documentation:

Download Nimble Storage Adaptive Flash Arrays 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).