Texas Memory RamSan-620 Enterprise Cached Flash RAID Storage

The RamSan-620 is a rack-mounted SLC NAND Flash SSD that provides plenty of shareable, high performance storage for IT organizations that need to respond to the growing storage and performance needs of their users and applications. It is a greener, more efficient alternative to hard disk drive-based systems. The RamSan-620 has extremely low latency and delivers 250,000 IOPS of sustained performance, compared to the 300 IOPS that a high end mechanical disk drive can achieve. SLC Flash and innovative controller designs give the RamSan-620 enterprise reliability and data protection. With capacity options of 1 – 5TB in a 2U enclosure that uses only 230 Watts, the RamSan-620 can handle data growth very efficiently. It installs quickly and easily and is managed in the same way as our other RamSan systems, integrating seamlessly into almost any SAN environment using Fibre Channel or InfiniBand connectivity. The RamSan-620 is extremely versatile and especially well suited for performance-demanding applications such as data warehouses, online transaction processing, batch processing, and video editing.

Flash has enabled TMS to deliver high performance storage solutions to a much broader customer base. For over 30 years we have been at the forefront of storage performance and application acceleration for enterprises. With this 15th generation RamSan-620 we are combining expertise and technology to solve challenging problems of performance and efficiency in enterprises of all types and sizes. The RamSan-620 is a breakthrough of giant green storage that is affordable for mainstream IT shops across industries.

The RamSan-620 offers scalable performance and affordable high capacity that is space and power efficient as well. A single unit provides from 1 to 5TB of reliable Single Level Cell (SLC) Flash, making the RamSan-620 the highest capacity SLC Flash SSD on the market. It also leads the industry in performance with 250,000 sustained I/Os per second (IOPS) for random reads and random writes. Throughput is 3GB per second and latency ranges from 80 to 200 microseconds, 25 times less than high performance hard disk drives. The RamSan-620 is a green IT choice, occupying only 2U of rack space and requiring only 230 Watts of power. In order to achieve similar performance, hard disk solutions would require as many as 500 drives, occupy 36 disk enclosures requiring nearly three full racks, consume over 7,000 Watts, and cost upwards of half a million dollars by the time the enclosures and controllers were included.

Each RamSan-620 unit can support 2 to 8 Fibre Channel (FC-140) or up to 4 InfiniBand (IB-140) links. Installation and management are simple, with embedded management capabilities and clear displays. One or more RamSan-620s can easily be integrated into a mixed storage infrastructure and monitored and managed through a common management framework.

Enterprise-grade Data Protection

The RamSan-620 provides enterprise-grade data protection features at the chip, board, and system levels. At the chip level, TMS uses only Single-Level Cell (SLC) Flash memory which has 10x greater endurance and reliability than other Flash chip architectures. Additionally, each Flash chip incorporates an Error Checking and Correction (ECC) data field within the chip to check and correct single-bit errors. At the board level, each set of Flash chips is organized as a board-level RAID, thereby eliminating any single chip failure from corrupting data.

At the system level, the RamSan-620 allows you to designate one of the cards inside the system as an active-spare that works hand-in-hand with the chip level RAID on each of our boards. If one of the cards experiences a failure that degrades its RAID protection, the system will immediately migrate the data on that card to the hot-spare to return to a fully redundant state. At that point, the failed card will be inactive and can be swapped during the next scheduled maintenance downtime. Having the active-spare means that a faulty card can be swapped in a matter of minutes without the need to migrate all 5TB of data off and back on to the RamSan.

Finally, the RamSan-620 offers data management options for data protection as well. Logical Storage Units (LUN) can be designated in multiple configurations, including the option of assigning a separate LUN to each of the RamSan-620’s 4 (1TB) or 20 (5TB) Flash cards. This flexibility allows you to mirror LUNs for maximum data protection.

The RamSan-620 has the features you expect from Texas Memory Systems products:

• A Complete Flash storage system in a 2U rack
• Low overhead, low power
• High performance and high IOPS, bandwidth, and capacity
• Standard management capabilities
• Separate LUNs assignable per internal RS-620 Flash card
• 512 byte block support, as well as the standard 4K block
• Two Flash ECC correction levels
• Active Spare for ultimate system reliability
• Super Capacitors for orderly power down
• Easy installation
• Fibre Channel or Infiniband connectivity
• Low initial cost of ownership
• Easy incremental addition of performance and capacity

I/Os Per Second

• 250,000 read and write

Capacity

• 1-5 TB of SLC Flash

Bandwidth

• 3 GB per second

Latency

• Writes: 80 microseconds
• Reads: 250 microseconds

Fibre Channel Connection

• 4-Gigabit Fibre Channel
• 2 ports standard; up to 8 ports available
• Supports point-to-point and switched fabric topologies
• Interoperable with Fibre Channel Host Bus Adaptors, switches, and operating systems

InfiniBand Connection (Available Soon)

• 4x InfiniBand (10-Gigabit)
• 1 port standard; up to 4 ports available
• Supports SRP upper level protocol
• Interoperable with InfiniBand Host Channel Adaptors, switches, and operating systems

Management

• Browser-enabled system monitoring, management, and configuration
• SNMP supported
• Telnet management capability
• SSH management capability
• Front panel displays system status and provides basic management functionality

LUN Support

• 1 to 1024 LUNs with variable capacity per LUN
• Flexible assignment of LUNs to ports
• Separate LUNs assignable per internal RS-620 Flash card
• 512 byte block support, as well as the standard 4K block

Data Retention

• Completely nonvolatile solid state disk

Reliability and Availability

• Layer 1: ECC (chip)
• Layer 2: board-level RAID
• Layer 3 (optional): Active Spare (system)
• Internal redundancies
  • Power supplies and fans
• Hot-swappable components
  • Power supplies

• 3.5" (2U) X 18"

Power Consumption (typical)

• 230 Watts