Nexsan SATABoy

Overview:

• High capacity - up to 14 TB in only 3U
• Nexsan's revolutionary AutoMAID™ energy saving technology greatly reduces power consumption and operating costs.
• Enterprise class performance and reliability
• Fibre Channel, SAS and iSCSI connectivity with wire-speed performance

Nexsan has once again raised the bar with the high performance SATABoy® storage array. SATABoy provides organizations with exceptional performance and unparalleled storage flexibility in a compact package to meet real world business objectives. The highly scalable SATABoy features FC, iSCSI and SAS connectivity to enable cost-effective storage of large amounts of information online, while its high speed performance ensures faster response times for mission critical applications. SATABoy is equally capable of delivering high IOPS for transactional applications and sustaining maximum MB/s throughput for high bandwidth applications such as streaming media.

Energy Saving Benefits

SATABoy offers the energy saving benefits of Nexsan's revolutionary AutoMAID™ technology. AutoMAID™ (Massive Array of Idle Disks) allows SATABoy to place its disk drives into an idle state to conserve energy yet provide near-instantaneous access to data. This powerful combination of high performance with energy saving capabilities enables users to maximize the total return on their storage hardware investment.

Best in Class Performance

SATABoy incorporates advanced features such as dual RAID engines, a high performance cache mirroring ASIC, and active/active failover to deliver uncompromising availability and reliability, feature rich functionality, and high performance. With sustained throughput speeds of up to 540 MB/s per controller, SATABoy provides superior performance across all standard platforms and operating systems. Dual fibre channel and iSCSI or dual SAS and iSCSI connectors on each controller enable easy and flexible implementation into a wide range of environments. SATABoy’s high performance and enormous capacity provides exceptional value that enhances all digital information storage applications, such as live on-line data, streaming media, tiered storage, broadcast/VOD and other business critical applications.

Simple to Use

The advanced hardware design of SATABoy is supported by Nexsan’s simple yet sophisticated Extreme Intelligence software, NexScan®, providing intuitive centralized management and monitoring. SATABoy’s integrated NexScan management tool is platform independent with an intuitive design that ensures complete control over configuration and optimization of your storage environment.

Configuration and Management

NexScan® is our embedded web-enabled Graphical User Interface (GUI). The platform independence of the SATABoy allows you to access your system from any standard Internet browser or from any host computer either directly connected or via a LAN or WAN with no software or patches required.

• 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-capacity SATA disk drives.
• All mission critical components, including RAID controllers, are hot swappable and completely redundant.
• NexScan™, our platform independent Web enabled GUI, provides simple system configuration, event and component monitoring from any standard web browser.
• Multi-box capable - NexScan enables remote management and configuration of multiple arrays from a single GUI.
• Up to 254 LUNS per controller
• Dynamic spare pooling and dedicated spares; array verification
• Dependable hot swapping of high capacity drives with the flexibility to support even higher capacities with Nexsan's proprietary RAID engine with soft-reconfigurable FPGAs.
• Failsafe 24/7 operation for uninterrupted business continuity.
• Three Year Warranty - Advance Exchange, 24X7 Technical Support.
• High capacity / High-density - SATABoy 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 and iSCSI or SAS and 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:

SATABoy Technical Specifications
Specifications
External Host Interface / Channels	Dual 4Gb Fibre Channel ports and dual iSCSI ports or dual 12Gb SAS Channel port and dual iSCSI ports per controller Single or dual active/active controllers or quad SCSI ports on a single controller
Internal Device Interface / Channels	Fourteen SAS/SATA device channels
Data Transfer Rates	Fibre: Up to 370MB/s sustained per controller
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	Up to 540 MB/s on a single controller with FC
LUNs Supported	254
Power
Current Voltage	25ºC cold start Dual PSU	4A @ 115 or 2A @ 230 Switchable 115/230 Autoswitching / Autoranging
Frequency	47-63 Hz
Operating Temperature	0°C to 40°C (32°F to 104°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 SATABoy 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.

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. Array is 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 at a settable interval. 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 Real Time 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 SATABoy Dataseet (.PDF)