Coraid ZX NAS Combines ZFS and Scale-Out Ethernet SAN

Coraid Inc., developer of Ethernet SAN solutions with more than 1,500 customers, unveiled the ZX-Series family of NAS servers.

Designed for cloud, video and big data customers, this unified storage solution is powered by the Oracle Solaris ZFS file system combined with Coraid's EtherDrive technology to enable scalability, performance and operational simplicity.

"Organizations are increasingly challenged to provide predictable, cost-effective file performance in the face of uncontrolled data growth," said Carl Wright, EVP at Coraid. "By extending our product family to include a best-in-class NAS offering, Coraid can meet that challenge with a unified storage solution that takes full advantage of the scalability and performance of Ethernet SAN."

For Cloud, Video and Big Data Workloads

Capturing, storing and analyzing ever-larger sets of human- and machine-generated data stresses the scalability of legacy NAS systems. The ZX-Series is for processing large data sets such as consumer behavior analysis or HD and 3D video format editing because it provides the throughput and scale necessary to support accelerating data growth.

The ZX-Series delivers performance using read- and write-optimized flash caches and parallel 1Gb/10GbE connectivity.

By connecting to Coraid EtherDrive SRX arrays via ATA over Ethernet for a scale-out architecture, the ZX-Series scales performance to multi-petabyte capacity across a shared pool. The performance and scale is complemented by data protection and features including triple-parity RAID, redundant array of independent nodes (RAIN), active-active clustering, unlimited snapshots, deduplication and compression.

"Our research confirms that scale-out storage designs built on Ethernet align well with the evolving architecture of the virtualized data center," said Roger Cox, research VP at Gartner. "Functions such as hybrid storage pools, data deduplication and compression optimize storage utilization, thus reducing acquisition costs and improving TCO."

ZX-Series features include:

• EtherDrive integration for multi-petabyte scalability and simplicity
• Real-time analysis and diagnosis of performance to monitor and enforce service levels
• Active-active cluster option for high availability
• Data compression and in-line deduplication to improve storage efficiency
• File-based snapshots, clones and replication for data protection
• Automated storage hierarchy with hybrid storage pools (HSPs) containing DRAM, flash cache and HDDs to optimize performance
• Seamless multiprotocol integration and secure data sharing between Microsoft Windows, Linux and Unix environments

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Coraid

Coraid is High Performance and Low Cost Networked Storage

Coraid is redefining the fundamental economics of storage with Ethernet SAN solutions that provide enterprises of all sizes with flexible, high-performance, scale-out storage ideally suited to dynamic High Performance Computing, video, virtualization and cloud environments. The key is Coraid’s use of the advanced protocol ATA over Ethernet.

Business Benefits

• Large amounts of shared storage at low prices.
• Better performance than traditional storage technology.
• Especially good for storing video and deploying Virtual Desktop Environments.
• Over 1300 Satisfied Customers of Coraid including Ford and Disney.
• New storage access technology means lower price and higher performance with better reliability.

Technical Features and Benefits

• 5-8x Price/Performance advantage over Fibre Channel and iSCSI storage arrays.
• CorOS™ parallel processing scale-out SAN operating system.
• Distributed, modular architecture scales from a few Terabytes to Petabytes.
• Automatic Load Balancing reduces bottlenecks; ideal for VMware environments.
• Continuous RAIDShield™ testing fixes disk bad blocks; reduces drive failures.

New Technology Designed for Rapid Access at Low Cost (see above)

• Layer-2 Ethernet
• Less than $1,000/TB
• Incredibly fast (>1,800 MB/s)
• Plug-and-play configuration
• Scale-out architecture

Better Than Traditional Fibre Channel or iSCSI Networked Storage (see above)

• Expensive
• Controller hurts performance
• Complex to set-up and maintain
• Difficult to scale

Simplified SAN Management

Coraid’s CorOS™ software provides the intelligence that enables rapid installation (minutes not hours), simple management, and RAID redundancy. The simplicity of EtherDrive Storage makes it easy to manage, because it’s easy to understand.

EtherDrive is a disk connected to your server via Ethernet. That disk may actually be a RAID volume, but it just looks like a local disk to the server. No need to learn complicated technology like Fibre Channel. Just add SAS, SSD or SATA disks to the EtherDrive Storage Appliance and you have all the space you want available for any server attached to the Ethernet SAN. It’s that simple.

Disruptive Price/Performance

Coraid’s EtherDrive® Ethernet SAN storage solutions deliver flexible, high-performance, scale-out storage designed from the ground up for simplicity and virtualization. EtherDrive® storage enables lower OPEX and 5-8x price performance advantage over legacy Fibre Channel systems.

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