Nimble Storage has introduced what it describes as 'an aggressive entry point' to all-flash storage. The new AF1000 is a full-featured all-flash array that offers superior scalability, allowing customers to start small and scale non-disruptively up to 8PB at a substantially lower cost. Nimble also introduced a new generation of Adaptive Flash arrays with significantly improved price-performance and price-capacity benefits across the portfolio. All Nimble arrays include InfoSight Predictive Analytics to predict and prevent storage and non-storage issues across the infrastructure stack.
“Mid-size and large enterprises love the performance and availability of the All Flash arrays we released in February. However, many smaller organisations want all-flash at a lower entry point, without sacrificing features and scalability,” said Ajay Singh, vice president of product management at Nimble Storage. “The new Nimble All Flash array makes it affordable for organisations of any size to benefit from an all-flash platform with the same capabilities and scalability found in high-end all-flash arrays. The AF1000 is an “entry-level” all-flash array without limitations.”
The starting point for an AF1000 has up to 20TB effective capacity and is expandable up to 165TB effective capacity in 4U. It can also scale-up and scale-out non-disruptively to achieve over 1.2M IOPS and 8PB of all-flash capacity. Because every Nimble All Flash and Adaptive Flash array runs the same NimbleOS, management and functionality is identical and arrays of any type can be clustered and managed as a single entity in a Unified Flash Fabric. Customers who use All Flash for primary applications can leverage Adaptive Flash for backup, disaster recovery, and archival at a third of the cost of All Flash.
New Generation of Adaptive Flash Arrays – Expanding the Price-Performance Advantage
Nimble CS-Series Adaptive Flash arrays deliver flexible performance and capacity for mixed mainstream workloads at one-third the total cost of ownership of legacy hybrid arrays. Built with the same NimbleOS, they can be clustered with Nimble All Flash arrays and managed as a single entity in a Unified Flash Fabric. In this way, applications can be transparently migrated between All Flash and Adaptive Flash.
The new portfolio consists of the CS1000, CS3000, CS5000 and CS7000 and delivers up to 2X performance improvement and 40% lower cost of capacity over the previous generation of Adaptive Flash arrays. The new high-end CS7000 array achieves up to 230K IOPS and scales to over 2.4 PB of effective capacity. Nimble All Flash arrays already benefit from inline variable block deduplication and compression. Deduplication is planned for the Adaptive Flash arrays in a future release at no cost for existing customers who maintain an active support contract.
The new Adaptive Flash arrays are designed to suit a broad range of primary applications. They can also be built in highly cost-optimised configurations to achieve a preferred platform for secondary storage. When primary applications are on a Nimble All Flash array, an Adaptive Flash array can be used for backup, disaster recovery and archival at a third of the cost of All Flash. The new generation of Adaptive Flash arrays extend this capability further by delivering better price-performance for these secondary workloads.
Every Nimble Storage array includes InfoSight Predictive Analytics to predict and prevent issues across the infrastructure stack. The customer support experience is transformed because tasks handled by traditional Level 1 and 2 support staff are automated. The Nimble support organisation is made up entirely of Level 3 experts that answer calls in less than a minute on average. The most complex issues are rapidly resolved because InfoSight already has the information required to solve the problem.
Timeless Guarantee Applied to Entire Predictive Flash Platform
Timeless storage is an innovative new business model built on trust and transparency. Every Nimble array comes with all-inclusive software licensing, guaranteed flat support pricing for the life of the product, no forklift upgrades and a seven-year lifespan on SSDs. There is also an option where after three years, a customer receives a free new controller that is guaranteed to be at least 25 percent faster when they renew support for an additional three years.
