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Touting high density, energy savings, and drive mixing (SAS/SATA/SSD), Nexsan recently introduced the E-Series of disk subsystems, which are targeted mainly at secondary storage applications such as disk-to-disk (D2D) based backup and archiving.
The 2U E18 holds as many as 18 SAS drives and 10.8TB of capacity. Integrators and end users can also mix SAS and solid state disks (SSDs) in the array. The E18 comes with two 8Gbps Fibre Channel ports and two GbE iSCSI ports per controller, with up to two controllers per array.
The 4U E60 can be configured with up to 60 SAS or SATA drives for a maximum capacity of 120TB per array and a density of 15 drives per 1U. Users can also configure the E60 with SSDs. Features include two 8Gbps Fibre Channel ports and two GbE iSCSI ports per controller ,and up to two controllers per subsystem.
In comparison, an EMC VNX5100 array requires 12U for 60 drives, compared to Nexsan’s E60, which requires 4U for 60 drives.
Nexsan’s E60X is a 4U expansion chassis with the same drive/capacity specifications as the E60, but the E60X comes with two 4x SAS connectors per controller and an Ethernet port for management.
The arrays do not come with software such as replication, snapshots and thin provisioning.
A dual-port 10GbE card is expected in the next quarter, according to Vicki Grey, Nexsan’s vice president of marketing.
With the introduction of the E-Series, Nexsan added a fourth level to its AutoMAID power-saving technology. Level 4 draws the least power, and has the longest recovery time (the time for drives to fully ramp up), of the four AutoMAID levels. Nexsan claims that AutoMAID Level 4, which powers off drive electronics, has an 87% power savings and a 30- to 60-second recovery time. In contrast, AutoMAID Level 1 provides a 25% power savings and sub-second recovery times.
Pricing for the E18 with nine 450GB SAS drives and one controller starts at less than $45,000 MSRP. An E60 with 20 1TB SATA drives and one controller starts at less than $52,000 MSRP.
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