Nexsan SASBeast

Overview:

• High speed – blazing SAS IOPS and read/write throughput performance
• High density – 42 drive bays in only 4U providing up to 25.2TB of SAS capacity
• Flexible – combine SAS and SATA drives in the same chassis for separate storage tiers
• Reliable – enterprise-class quality with fully redundant components
• Energy Efficiency – Nexsan's AutoMAID™ ultra green technology delivering up to 60% in energy savings

2 big needs. 1 small solution. Conquer transaction performance and high capacity in the same storage system. Whether you need high performance (for Exchange) or high capacity (for disk to disk backup, file servers or storing large amounts of content), SASBeast provides the speed and capacity to meet the broadest range of storage requirements.

SASBeast delivers the industry’s best value by combining enterprise SAS performance with the density, reliability, affordability and energy efficiency Nexsan is known for.

Built for Performance...

Blazing SAS IOPS and read/write throughput performance make SASBeast the perfect choice for transactional and/or database intensive applications (Exchange, SQL, Oracle, etc.). SASBeast’s high availability architecture features full redundancy across all active components and delivers industry leading reliability for enterprise class environments.

And Capacity...

Innovatively engineered to reliably mix SAS and SATA disks in the same SASBeast chassis, the user is provided separate storage tiers for different applications. Use the SAS storage tier for performance intensive applications and the SATA storage tier for capacity intensive applications. Nexsan is changing the rules of storage by allowing the user to meet the broadest range of storage requirements in a single chassis.

Unprecedented Energy Savings

SASBeast exclusively features the ground breaking energy saving benefits of AutoMAID™ technology which places disks in an idle state during inactivity while providing near-instantaneous access to data when needed. AutoMAID uniquely delivers the benefits of green without the limitations.

SASBeast gives users the flexibility to utilize Fibre Channel or iSCSI connectivity or both simultaneously. Flexible, scalable and completely OS independent, SASBeast offers dual function FC and iSCSI connectivity with wire-speed throughput performance.

With SASBeast, Nexsan engineers have built the industry’s most complete and cost effective high performance storage system. SASBeast’s advanced mechanical design provides superior cooling for optimal thermal operation, reduces disk vibration and delivers outstanding energy efficiency with extreme density (42 disks in 4U). SASBeast’s unique design extends individual drive life and provides TCO savings year over year.

SASBeast’s unique combination of technologies delivers unsurpassed performance, reliability and cost savings for a broad range of storage requirements. With an extreme density design that provides a compact footprint and scales to hundreds of terabytes of capacity in a single rack, SASBeast easily meets the demands of transactional and/or database intensive applications (Exchange, SQL, Oracle, etc.).

Dual controllers using Nexsan’s award winning high performance design provides blistering throughput performance with 42 spindles that can be accessed simultaneously, segmented into multiple RAID sets or configured into a single, large storage pool.

All individual SASBeast components are fully redundant and hot swappable.

The SASBeast’s NexScan® management interface is built into the SASBeast controller alleviating the need to have a separate server or application manage the storage array. This sophisticated management utility monitors and reports the status of all subsystems. Included in NexScan are Tele-Guard®, Nexsan’s phone-home feature for user notification of errors or prediction of error, and our WorldView feature enables multi-box management. LUN Mapping allows users to easily configure the massive disk capacity for dozens of servers or one.

Advanced Features:

• Enterprise class storage array built around the latest high-performance SAS disk drives.
• Exceptional IOPS and throughput performance
• All active components (RAID controllers, fans, power supplies and drives) are redundant and individually hot-swappable.
• Highest density per rack inch – 42 drive bays in only 4U – up to 25.2TB of SAS capacity
• Up to 4 RAID engines and 4GB battery protected cache when using dual controllers
• Supports hardware RAID 0, 1, 1+0, 4, 5 and 6 including global hot spares
• Supports multiple RAID sets and multiple volumes per RAID set.
• Supports up to 254 LUNS per controller
• Integrated Fibre Channel and iSCSI connectivity for flexible implementation
• Completely OS independent. No special software drivers required
• Horizontal mid-plane design promotes superior airflow and alleviates insertion stress points
• Anti-accumulative rotational vibration design maximizes drive reliability
• Embedded web-browser GUI over 10/100/1000 port, supports email alerts and SNMP traps
• WorldView™ provides ability to manage and configure multiple Nexsan units from a single GUI
• Industry leading energy effeciency with AutoMAID™ technology

AutoMAID™ Energy Saving Technology:

Nexsan's evolutionary AutoMAID (Automatic Massive Array of Idle Disks) energy saving technology transparently places disk drives into an idle state to vastly reduce power and cooling costs. AutoMAID delivers the cost-effecdtive benefits of MAID 2.0 without the limitations of slow access times and special host software.

AutoMAID is granular to an individual drive or RAID set and offers multiple levels of energy savings. AutoMAID is user selectable enabling users to determine the right level of response time performance to energy savings. AutoMAID is the first MAID 2.0 architecture that supports VTL, full file format D2D and standard high performance RAID implementations.

Key Points

• AutoMAID reduces power and cooling costs
• Nexsan’s AutoMAID delivers the benefits of MAID without the limitations
• Available on Nexsan Assureon, SATABoy, SATABeast, and SATABeast Xi

AutoMAID Defined

• AutoMAID automatically reduces power consumption and heat generation on idle drives
• Trade-off between response times and power savings are user configurable
• AutoMAID behavior happens automatically and transparently to host – no software changes required
• Typical configuration settings:
  • Level 1: Heads Unloaded
    • 15% to 20% savings
    • Sub-second recovery time
  • Level 2: Heads Unloaded, slows to 4000 RPM
    • 35% to 45% savings
    • 15 second recovery time
  • Level 3: Stops spinning (sleep mode; powered on)
    • 60% to 70% savings
    • 30 to 45 second recovery time

AutoMAID Safety Features

• In maximum power saving mode, drive spin up is sequenced to reduce power surges
• Drives automatically wake up for periodic surface scan to ensure data integrity (user configurable)
• AutoMAID has no impact on performance if left on in data-intensive server applications
• Only two simple configuration settings – "timeout" and "power savings desired"

    

Technical Specifications:

SASBeast Technical Specifications
Specifications
External Host Interfaces / Channels/ Controllers	Dual 4Gb Fibre Channel SFP LC host ports per controller Dual 1Gb iSCSI ports per controller Single or Dual active/active controllers 2 RAID engines per controller 2GB battery protected cache per controller Forty-two SATA and/or SAS device channels
SAS or SAS + SATA drive combos	- Up to 42 SAS disks (populate as needed) - Up to 14 SAS disks + 28 SATA disks - Up to 28 SAS disks + 14 SATA disks
Controllers	Single or dual active/active RAID controllers
Management Port	RS-232
Cache	Up to 2GB cache per controller
RAID Levels	0, 1, 1+0, 4, 5 and 6 including global hot spares
LUNs Supported	254
Power
Current Voltage	Dual PSUs - 500W each / 286VA fully redundant Switchable 110/240 Auto switching / Auto ranging
Frequency	50-440 Hz
Operating Temperature	0°C to 35°C (32°F to 95°F)
Dimensions and Weight
Height	7 in. (4U)
Width	fits in standard 19" EIA rack with supplied mounting rails
Depth	29.5”
Weight	151 lbs (with dual controllers and 42 disk drives)

NexScan GUI - Configuration and Management:

NexScan® is our embedded WEB enabled GUI ( Graphical User Interface ). NexScan provides easy access to your SASBoy system from most standard internet browsers or from any host computer either directly connected or via a LAN or WAN. NexScan is platform independent. No software or patches required.

Additional access via the RS-232 serial port or network interface to an ANSI terminal or emulator. Event log for all significant events stored on disk. Single click access to summary of all problems and warnings. Arrays are verified before being put into production; automatic "parity scrub" (array verify) is performed as a background task every 24 hours thereafter. Shows status of disk drives, power supplies, fans, RAID controller. Information is automatically refreshed. Complete hardware status page lists all significant hardware conditions such as voltages, temperature, battery mode, cache settings, network settings, and blower RPM Supports automatic IP address assignment via DHCP, manually using a static IP address over serial port, via web page, or by use of the IP Config Tool. Cache management page allows configuration of Cache as enabled or disabled, or remotely settable via standard SCSI commands

Build RAID sets (and set RAID level and stripe size), partition RAID sets into Volumes, map Volumes to LUNs and Host Ports, and manage Spares For each drive, complete Model Name, Capacity, Serial Number, and Firmware Revision is reported along with errors and retries, if any. Alerts and warnings sent out using SMTP email alerts with problem summary, hyperlink to the enclosure management page, plus user-defined fields. Basic SNMP trap support. Extra security feature requires manual confirmation of destructive media operations. Battery-backed Real Time Clock/Calendar is used to time stamp all major events Configure and monitor subsystem using most standard web browsers.

SASBeast Teleguard - Phone Home:

Tele-Guard™ is Nexsan's "phone home" feature incorporated within our award-winning line of SATA storage solutions. Tele-Guard™ works in conjuction with the NexScan™ GUI to provide users with a simple, integrated set of tools to effectively manage and monitor your Nexsan storage system. Utilizing NexScan™, our WEB enabled GUI (Graphical User Interface), you can access your system from any standard internet browser. In addition, NexScan™ is platform independent and can be accessed directly from a host computer or over a LAN or WAN. NexScan™ uses standard html eliminating any need for special client software. Tele-Guard™ monitors all system parameters and allows either single or multiple user alerts to be sent via ' Plain English ' e-mails, Internet based SMS notification or Tele-Guard's™ pager support.

Boy and Beast Product Family:

 

Feature	SASBoy (SAS drives)	SASBeast (SAS drives)	SASBoy (SAS+SATA drives)	SASBeast (SAS+SATA drives)	SATABoy	SATABeast
Drive Types	SAS 300GB, 450GB, 600GB - 15000 RPM	SAS 300GB, 450GB, 600GB - 15000 RPM	SAS 300GB, 450GB, 600GB 15000 RPM and SATA 1TB 7200RPM	SAS 300GB, 450GB, 600GB - 15000 RPM and SATA 2TB and 1TB	SATA 1TB, 750GB, 500GB	SATA 2TB, 1TB, 750GB, 500GB
Drive Bays / Rack U	14 Drive Bays / 3U	42 Drive Bays / 4U	14 Drive Bays/ 3U ( 4SAS w/10 SATA or 7SAS w/ 7SATA)	42 Drive Bays / 4U (SAS or SATA in groups of 14)	14 Drive Bays / 3U	42 Drive Bays / 4U
Controllers	1 Standard Dual Optional Dual RAID Engines per Controller	1 Standard Dual Optional Dual RAID Engines per Controller	1 Standard Dual Optional Dual RAID Engines per Controller	1 Standard Dual Optional Dual RAID Engines per Controller	1 Standard Dual Optional	1 Standard Dual Optional
Battery Protected Cache per Controller	2GB Standard	2GB Standard	2GB Standard	2GB Standard	512MB, 1GB or 2GB	512MB, 1GB or 2GB
Host Ports	2 FC or 2 SAS and 2 iSCSI Ports per Controller	2 FC and 2 iSCSI Ports per Controller	2 FC or 2 SAS and 2 iSCSI Ports per Controller	2 FC and 2 iSCSI Ports per Controller	2 FC or 2 SAS and 2 iSCSI Ports per Controller	2 FC and 2 iSCSI Ports per Controller
Sustained Data Rates (with Dual Controllers)	820 MB/s Reads	1100+ MB/s Reads	820 MB/s Reads	1100+ MB/s Reads	540 + MB/s Reads (with single controller)	1100 MB/s Reads
Hardware RAID 6	Included	Included	Included	Included	Included	Included
RAID Levels	0, 1, 1+0, 4, 5, 6	0, 1, 1+0, 4, 5, 6	0, 1, 1+0, 4, 5, 6	0, 1, 1+0, 4, 5, 6	0, 1, 1+0, 4, 5, 6	0, 1, 1+0, 4, 5, 6
LUNs	254 per Controller	254 per Controller	254 per Controller	254 per Controller	254 per Controller	254 per Controller
Redundant Power Supplies	2 Redundant Standard 500 watt	2 Redundant Standard	2 Redundant Standard	2 Redundant Standard	2 Redundant Standard 400 watt	2 Redundant Standard 760 watt
Global "Hot Drive Spares"
Hot-pluggable Controllers, Drives, Power Supplies
Multiple RAID sets and LUNs per RAID set
254 LUNs per Controller
LUN Masking, ACL, Read Only Access
Nexsan WorldView Multi-unit Manager
Nexsan NexScan Onboard Browser Based GUI
Nexsan Tele-Guard Phone Home Manager
3 yr. Warranty, Advanced Exchange, 24x7 Support

Documentation:

Nexsan SASBeast Daasheet (.PDF)