Nexsan SATABeast

Overview:

• Highest storage density in the industry - up to 84 TB in only 4U
• Nexsan's revolutionary AutoMAID™ energy saving technology greatly reduces power consumption and operating costs.
• Full Enterprise class performance and reliability
• Dual function Fibre Channel and iSCSI connectivity with wire-speed performance. Flexible, scalable and completely OS independent, SATABeast easily supports a broad range of storage infrastructures.

Unleash the power of the SATABeast™ extreme density storage array from Nexsan Technologies. Designed from the ground up to set new standards for high-capacity storage systems, SATABeast delivers the industry's best performance and cost-effectiveness in a scalable disk solution. With unparalleled density, availability and energy efficiency, SATABeast maximizes the return on your storage hardware investment.

Unleash the Beast for

For All Your Storage Requirements Including:

Primary Storage. Designed for enterprise class environments where reliability is an absolute, SATABeast’s high availability architecture features full redundancy across all active components. Blazing wire-speed read/write throughput and high IOPS performance make SATABeast the perfect choice for data-intensive applications.

Secondary Storage and D2D. Disk to Disk Backup. Online access to data means superior business continuity. The SATABeast provides the speed, fault tolerance and high availability to deliver superior data protection while its unmatched capacity easily handles enormous volumes of files. SATABeast enables unprecedented amounts of data to be cost-effectively stored and instantly accessed.

Unprecedented Energy Savings

SATABeast and SATABoy from Nexsan are the first high performance, high capacity RAID storage systems to also offer the energy saving benefits of AutoMAID™ technology. AutoMAID™ (Massive Array of Idle Disks) allows SATABeast to place its disk drives to an idle state to conserve energy yet provide near-instantaneous access to data. SATABeast'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 315 cost-correct terabytes of capacity in a single rack, SATABeast easily meets the demands of the most capacity-hungry storage environments.

High Performance Across Both Fibre Channel and ISCSI

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

Features & Benefits:

Advanced Features

• Enterprise class storage array built around the latest high-capacity SATA disk drives.
• High performance – 1100 MB/s sustained throughput with FC
• Reduced energy consumption and costs through AutoMAID™ technology.
• All active components are redundant and individually hot-swappable
• Highest density per rack inch
• Supports RAID 0, 1, 1+0, 4, 5 and 6
• WorldView™ - Provides ability to manage and configure multiple Nexsan units from a single GUI
• Anti-Accumulative Rotational Vibration design enables maximum drive reliability.
• Supports multiple RAID sets and multiple volumes per set.
• Horizontal midplane design promotes superior airflow and alleviates insertion stress points
• Integrated Fibre Channel and iSCSI connectivity for flexible implementation
• Completely OS independent. No special software drivers or server-based management applications required.
• Online SATABeast delivers access to data up to 500 times faster than tape libraries and 20x faster than other MAID systems.
• Embedded web-browsable GUI over 10/100/1000 port, supports email alerts and SNMP traps
• Up to 2GB cache per controller
• Supports up to 254 LUNS per controller

Key Benefits

• With SATABeast, Nexsan engineers have architected the industry's most complete and cost-effective high capacity storage system. SATABeast's advanced mechanical design provides superior cooling for optimal thermal operation, reduces drive vibration and delivers outstanding energy efficiency in an extreme density (42 drives in 4U high) form factor. SATABeast's unique design extends individual drive life and provides TCO savings year over year.
• SATABeast employs Nexsan's revolutionary AutoMAID™ energy saving technology. AutoMAID transparently places SATABeast disk drives in an idle state reducing power consumption and operational costs. AutoMAID delivers the cost-saving benefits of MAID (Massive Array of Idle Disks) without the limitations of slow access times and special host software. Nexsan's AutoMAID is granular to an individual drive or RAID set and enables users to determine the level of access speed and energy savings desired. AutoMAID is the first MAID architecture that supports VTL (Virtual Tape Libraries), full file format D2D and standard RAID implementations.
• Nexsan's award-winning Performance SATAT RAID controller architecture utilizes dual RAID engines on each SATABeast controller to provide extremely high throughput performance across 42 spindles. SATABeast's 42 high capacity drives can be segmented into multiple RAID sets or a single large storage pool. LUN Mapping allows users to easily configure the massive disk capacity for dozens of servers or one.
• SATABeast performs continuous background integrity scans to ensure drive health and data accessibility. Each controller features full cache coherency to maintain data integrity even in the event of a power loss.
• All individual SATABeast components are fully redundant and hot swappable. This advanced design provides increased ROI by eliminating the need to replace an entire multi-drive blade should a single drive fail.
• SATABeast's NexScan management interface is built into the SATABeast 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 over a 10/100/1000-network port. Included in NexScan are Tele-GuardT, Nexsan's phone-home feature for user notification of errors or prediction of error, and WorldView, our multi-box management feature.

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:

SATABeast Technical Specifications
Specifications
External Host Interface / Channels	Dual 4Gb Fibre Channel SFP LC host ports per controller Dual iSCSI ports per controller Single or Dual active/active controllers
Internal Device Interface / Channels	Forty-two SATA/100 or 133 device channels
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
LUNs Supported	254
Power
Current Voltage	Nominal 350 watts 4.5 A @ 115VAC 2.5 A @ 230 VAC 1200 BTU/hour	Peak 750 watts 6.5 A @ 115VAC 3.5 A @ 230 VAC 2500 BTU/hour
Dimensions and Weight
Height	7 in. (4U)
Width	fits in standard 19" EIA rack with supplied mounting rails
Depth	29.5”
Weight	72.5 lbs (w/o disk drives)

NexScan GUI - Configuration and Management:

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

Shows status of disk drives, power supplies, fans, RAID controller. Information is automatically refreshed at scheduled intervals. Single click access to summary of all problems and warnings. Event log for all significant events stored on disk. Array is verified before being put into production; automatic "parity scrub" (array verify) is performed as a background task every 24 hours thereafter. Additional access via the RS-232 serial port or network interface to an ANSI terminal or emulator. 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 IP Gleaning, over serial port, or via web page. Cache management page allows configuration of cache as enabled or disabled, or remotely settable via standard SCSI commands

SMART environmental monitoring support. DNS support for symbolic addresses. 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. Extra security feature requires manual confirmation of destructive media operations. Battery-backed Clock/Calendar is used to time stamp all major events Configure and monitor subsystem using any standard web browser.

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 SATABeast Datasheet (.PDF)