Unifosa/Proware Unveiled EP-4965D Storage System

Unifosa Corp. (Proware Technology Corp.) unveiled EP-4965D, a enterprise 4U 96-bays density storage, optimized for key/value pair object storage.

This product is based on the Marvell Technology Group Ltd.‘ Armada-3700 Dual core ARM v8 at 1.2Ghz based ‘Micro Server-node’ architecture.

EP-4965D appliances can host up to 96 Micro Server-nodes, each one with a dedicated 3.5″ SATA HDD or SSD and dual 2.5Gb/s SGMII ports, dual six-port 40GbE backend Marvell Prestera family switches for external connectivity and N+1 power supplies.

With the advancement of large scale cloud computing platforms like OpenStack, the business of storage has been changed. Scale out software defined storage solutions are rapidly becoming pervasive as the implementation model of choice for large scale deployments. Agile business models require equally agile platforms to build upon. By replacing the proprietary data silos of the past with flexible server hardware, cloud providers have more control of their environments resulting in better value for their customers. The company has embraced this change, offering a wide selection of server hardware.

Benefits:

• Reduces TCO by simplifying cloud and data center storage hardware and software stacks

• Improves performance by eliminating layers of antiquated file system software

• Enables flexible and independent scaling of compute and storage growth

• Supports hyperscale with up to 960 drives and 960 Nodes Micro servers in a 40U rack

• Connects storage directly to existing data center data communications fabric

• For object storage, hyperscale and scale-out storage, cloud storage arrays and cloud backup storage applications

Use cases:

• Cloud backup and archive providers

• Public and private cloud services

• Geographically distributed storage applications

• Unstructured object data (videos, images, etc.)

EP-4965D is also option for Interposer, which is designed to convert 3.5” HDD SATA 3.0 to dual port SGMII (2.5Gb/s) for distributed storage system applications. Normally it functions as MicroServer to turn a dumb 3.5” SATA HDD to intelligent computing and storage node to enable distributed storage architecture. Interposer includes dual core ARM Cortex-A53 running up to 1.0GHz and integrates 8MB SPI flash, 4/8/16/32G eMMC 5.0 as well as 512MB/one/2GB DDR3-800MHz SDRAM loaded with Linux distribution such as Debian, Ubuntu, and CentOS, etc. Its integrated hardware and software platform allows third-party application ecosystem players to develop various computing and storage applications based upon Hadoop, CEPH, GlusterFS, and any open source software architecture.

Interposer key features:

• CPU
  Dual-core ARMv8 Cortex-A53 up to 1.0GHz
  32KB Instruction and 32KB Data L1 cache (four-way) with parity/ECC protection

• Memory
  Configurable 512MB/one/2GB 16-bit DDR3 800MHz
  8MB SPI Flash (Bootloader)
  4/8/16/32GB eMMC 5.0 (OS/Applications and data)

• Networking interface
  Two HS-SGMII (2.5/1.0Gbps)

• Storage interface
  One SATA 3.0

• Power management
  Adaptive voltage/frequency scaling
  Integrated power switches for dynamic shut-down of CPU cores and unused functions

• Power consumption
  ~5W

Target applications:

• IP/Ethernet drive Interposer

• MicroServer cluster module

EP-4965D hardware features include:

• A dual core ARMv8 Cortex-A53 CPU equipped with up to 2GB of RAM and flash memory for quick metadata access

• Two high-speed 2.5Gb/s HS-SGMII ports per Micro Server-node

• From 3 to 96 hot swappable Micro Server-nodes per appliance, for a maximum of 960TB, with 10TB HDDs, or 1,152TB, with recently introduced 12TB HDDs

• Two six-port 40Gb/s switches for both client connectivity and direct chassis interconnect, which can scale up to more than 10PB per rack

• Four N+1 power supplies and five removable fan modules, no single point of failure

• Power management that allows each 3.5” HDD to be turned on, set to idle, and shut down individually, to reduce system power consumption for near-line archive