Imation Launches Nexsan NST6000 Platform

Imation Corp. announced its next-generation, Nexsan NST unified hybrid storage platform and NestOS 3.0, a scalable, flexible storage OS.

NST6000 platform adds FC support and meets SAN and NAS workloads without sacrificing performance.

It is an unified hybrid storage platform, providing simultaneous support of block (FC, iSCSI) and file-level (NFS, CIFS, SMB and FTP) data traffic in a single solution without additional software overhead or licenses. It is for organizations that need scalable and high-performance storage that supports SAN and NAS enterprise workloads at the same time.

The NST6000 leverages solid-state technology to create the FASTier acceleration tier that increases storage I/O performance, lowers latency and extends the life of SSDs. The NST6000 and FASTier acceleration technology are for organizations that are growing their virtualized environments, expanding database applications and adding other applications that require adaptable, high-performance storage.

The first NST6000 model, the NST6530, features dedicated high performance controllers and a front-end FASTier caching engine connected to Nexsan E-Series storage, to meet the demanding random I/O performance requirements, up to five petabytes.

Optimized for virtualized IT environments with high capacity requirements, the NST6530 system will be demonstrated at VMworld 2013, from August 25-29 in San Francisco, CA.

It simultaneously supports large-scale I/O intensive workloads generated from multiple VMs.

"By including FC support in the Nexsan NST system, organizations can finally deploy a compact, efficient, fully unified hybrid storage system that lowers capital and operating expenses, and scales to meet the extreme data growth occurring in all organizations," said Mike Stolz, Imation’s VP of Nexsan marketing and support. "Senior executives, storage admins and IT and data center pros view unified hybrid storage as essential to numerous strategic initiatives, including ongoing server virtualization, backup and archiving, overall data center cost optimization, and support of the increasingly complex natures of their application deployments."

The heart of the NST6530 is the NestOS 3.0 storage OS, which will be available across the Nexsan NST hybrid storage solutions.

"NestOS 3.0 is an exciting starting point for a new class of fully unified hybrid storage solutions," said Ralph Akhras, VP of product development for Imation’s Nexsan solutions. "To develop it, we brought together feedback from end users and partners along with a development team that has a broad range of storage systems design and programming expertise."

"With the NST6530, Imation has accelerated the advancement of the Nexsan product line by providing an architecture that delivers high performance unified storage for sequential and random I/O," said George Crump, president and founder, Storage Switzerland. "Hybrid storage systems that support both file and block, such as the NST6530 with FASTier caching technology will increasingly become the workhorse of the data center."

RFA Uses NST Systems to Power Virtualized Environments
Richard Fleischman & Associates (RFA),a technology consultant and managed services provider for the financial services industry, has deployed an Nexsan NST unified hybrid storage solution both on-premise for client IT infrastructures, and in their own data center, where they deliver a range of hosted infrastructure and software services. RFA and its clients needed a storage solution that could scale vertically – deploying fewer storage arrays while maintaining high performance.

"Our customers are almost 100% virtualized," said Gregory Milis, CTO, RFA. "The Nexsan NST architecture handles a large amount of random I/O, and allows us to have capacity without sacrificing performance and to reduce the storage footprint in our data center. You would have to buy – and manage – twice as much storage to get the same performance and scale that we have with the NST hybrid solution."

Milis notes that many customers will benefit from the FC connectivity available in the NST6530 solution.

"Having FC connectivity in the NST6530 solution will allow customers to take full advantage of the hybrid storage array, especially those who already have made substantial investments in FC connectivity," Milis said.

HA and DR Solution:
NST6000MC Metro Storage Cluster
Imation is also announcing the NST6000MC Metro Storage Cluster. It is an integrated, HA and DR solution that extends data replication and failover capability from within a data center to a site on campus, or to sites located up to 10km away. It consists of two active/active controller nodes configured with Nexsan E-Series FC storage arrays.

The NST6000MC is available through Nexsan channel partners. The NST6530 and NestOS 3.0 will be available this fall. FC connectivity will only be available on NST6000 series systems.