Nexsan SASBoy

Overview:

• High transaction performance
• Nexsan's revolutionary AutoMAID™ energy saving technology greatly reduces power consumption and operating costs.
• High capacity – up to 8.4 TB in only 3U
• Fibre Channel, SAS and iSCSI connectivity with wire-speed performance

SASBoy provides organizations with exceptional performance and unparalleled energy savings in a compact package to meet real world business needs. The highly flexible SASBoy features FC, SAS and iSCSI connectivity to enable cost-effective high performance access to large amounts of information ensuring faster response times for business critical applications. SASBoy is equally capable of delivering high IOPS for transactional applications and sustaining maximum MB/s throughput for high bandwidth applications.

By reliably mixing SAS and SATA disks in the same SASBoy chassis, users can address both performance and capacity requirements in a single system. Use the SAS storage tier for performance intensive applications and the SATA storage tier for capacity intensive applications. By doing so, Nexsan uniquely delivers the flexibility to meet the broadest range of storage requirements in a single chassis.

Best In Class Performance

SASBoy incorporates advanced features such as dual RAID engines, cache mirroring, a high performance ASIC, and active/active failover to deliver uncompromising availability and reliability with high performance. With transaction speeds up to 50,000 IOPS from cache and 2,500 IOPS from disk, SASBoy’s high performance provides exceptional value that enhances all digital information storage applications, such as live online data, file serving, tiered storage, medical imaging storage and other business critical applications where performance is a must.

Combine Performance With Capacity

By reliably mixing SAS and SATA disks in the same SASBoy 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.

Energy Savings Without Performance Compromise

Even with high performance SAS drives, systems do not always access data 24x7. SASBoy understands these idle times and offers the energy saving benefits of Nexsan’s revolutionary AutoMAID™ technology. AutoMAID™ (Massive Array of Idle Disks). AutoMAID allows SASBoy to reduce energy needs without compromising performance. User selectable, the AutoMAID can reduce energy over multiple settings to conserve energy yet provide near-instantaneous access to data. SASBoy’s unique combination of high performance with energy saving capabilities sets it apart enabling organizations to maximize the use of their investment while reducing its cost of operation.

Simple To Use

Like all Nexsan storage arrays, the SASBoy is supported by Nexsan’s simple management software, NexScan®. NexScan provides an intuitive, centralized management and monitoring tool platform allowing access from any standard internet browser ensuring users have complete control over configuration and optimization of your storage environment.

• Real-time event, hardware and thermal monitoring dynamically presented.
• Performance statistics monitoring; event logging, rebuild and verify utilities.

Advanced Features:

• High performance RAID solution built around the latest high performance SAS disk drives.
• Combine SAS and SATA drives in the same chassis.
• High availability - All mission critical components, including RAID controllers, are hot swappable and fully redundant.
• Energy efficient without compromising application performance, AutoMAID.
• Multi-Box management -- easily manage multiple SASBoy and SATABoy units form a single GUI.
• Up to 254 LUNs per controller.
• Dynamic spare pooling and dedicated spares; array verification.
• LUN Masking capability with full Access Control List (ACL) Read/Write and Read Only permissions per initiator, per LUN along with group policies.
• Failsafe 24/7 operation for uninterrupted business continuity.
• Three Year Warranty - Advance Exchange, 24X7 Technical Support.
• High density / high performance - SASBoy features 14 drives in only 3U of rack space.
• Arrays can be configured for RAID levels 0, 1, 1+0, 4, 5 and 6.
• OS independent - No special software drivers required to connect to any host system.
• Integrated Fibre Channel with iSCSI or SAS with iSCSI connectivity for flexible implementation.

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:

SASBoy Technical Specifications
Specifications
External Host Interface / Channels	Dual 4Gb Fibre Channel ports and dual iSCSI or dual 12Gb SAS ports and dual iSCSI per controller Single or dual active/active controllers
Internal Device Interface / Channels	Fourteen SAS/SATA device channels
Data Transfer Rates	Fibre: Up to 50,000 random IOPS from cache
Controllers	Single or Dual Controller Active-Active Failover / Cache Coherency
Drive Bay Size	14 Bay / 3U
Cache	Up to 2GB per controller
Battery Back-up	Yes
RAID Levels	0, 1, 1+0, 4, 5 and 6
Sustained Data Rates	820 MB/s throughput with FC
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	5.25 in. (3u) / 13.25 cm
Width	19 in. / 48.26 cm
Depth	20 in. / 50.8 cm
Weight	46 lbs / 21 Kgs (without disk drives and w/o rails)

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.

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 SASBoy Datasheet (.PDF)