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    Nimble Storage Combines Best of Flash and Magnetic Storage

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    Study Finds Network Admins Juggling Multiple Initiatives

    When it comes to managing storage these days, many IT organizations are making a tradeoff between the performance provided by Flash storage and the capacity enabled by magnetic storage.

    Nimble Storage today unveiled a CS700 Series hybrid storage array and All-Flash Shelf offering that makes managing the interplay between Flash and magnetic storage a whole lot simpler.

    Radhika Krishnan, vice president of product marketing and alliance for Nimble Storage, says that rather than being forced to choose between storage performance and capacity, Nimble Storage is trying to make it simpler to take advantage of each storage medium in a complementary fashion.

    To that end, Adaptive Flash products from Nimble Storage are based on a Cache Accelerated Sequential (CASL) architecture that, for example, makes sure that writes are handled by magnetic storage while all reads are processed using SSDs. The CASL software that manages the arrays runs on controllers that are based on the latest Intel Xeon processors.

    Those processers enable the CS700 to deliver 125,000 IOPs across 12 hard drives and four SSDs in a 3u rack.

    The All-Flash Shelf, meanwhile, is designed to provide access to 16 TBs of storage per node, or 64 TBs in a 4-node scale-out cluster.

    Those capabilities are extended via an InfoSight management system that Nimble Storage makes available via the cloud.

    Krishnan says as Flash storage goes mainstream, IT organizations want to be able to apply Flash alongside magnetic storage in a way that optimizes performance while reining in costs.

    While Flash is a boon to the enterprise in terms of cost, it’s not like magnetic storage is going away any time soon. Most IT organizations just want a storage architecture where the two can play nicely together with the minimal amount of management overhead possible.

    Mike Vizard
    Mike Vizard
    Michael Vizard is a seasoned IT journalist, with nearly 30 years of experience writing and editing about enterprise IT issues. He is a contributor to publications including Programmableweb, IT Business Edge, CIOinsight and UBM Tech. He formerly was editorial director for Ziff-Davis Enterprise, where he launched the company’s custom content division, and has also served as editor in chief for CRN and InfoWorld. He also has held editorial positions at PC Week, Computerworld and Digital Review.

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