Thin Is In

Everybody knows that good things come in small packages. With bandwidth of 5 GB/s in a svelte 1U package, the RamSan-710 proves this adage - and then some.

The RamSan-710 is the latest member of Texas Memory Systems' state of the art Series-7 family. Competing SSDs cannot match its sustained performance and reliability, particularly in a package this compact. Designed in a 1U rackmount configuration, the RamSan-710 showcases TMS' 30+ years of SSD innovation.

The RamSan-710 packs a lot of connectivity into its small size. The back panel has two slots for dual port 8 Gb Fibre Channel controllers or dual port QDR InfiniBand controllers. This SSD also features a redundant power supply, providing an added measure of protection against power issues.

RamSan-710 rear view

The RamSan-710 provides plenty of shareable, high performance storage for IT organizations that need to respond to the growing storage and performance needs of their users and applications. It is a greener, more efficient alternative to hard disk drive-based systems. The RamSan-710 has extremely low latency and delivers 5 GB/s of sustained performance.

Single-level cell (SLC) Flash and innovative controller designs give the RamSan-710 enterprise reliability and data protection. With a capacity of 5 TB in a 1U enclosure, the RamSan-710 can efficiently handle data growth. It installs quickly and easily, and is managed in the same way as our other RamSan® systems, integrating seamlessly into almost any SAN environment.

Because of the RamSan-710's nonvolatile SLC Flash storage media, data is not lost during a power loss. Flash translation tables are held in battery-backed RAM that is written to Flash in the event of power loss, so users don't have to waste time waiting for indexes to rebuild when power is reconnected. The RamSan-710’s raw speed and power mean its data transfer rates are much faster than competing Flash drives and hundreds of times faster than traditional mechanical hard disks.

When you need a simple, economical solution to accelerate applications requiring large, fast buffer areas or to speed up applications that are random access intensive, the RamSan-710 is the clear choice. This SSD can make wait times associated with data warehousing, online transaction processing (OLTP), batch processing, enterprise resource planning (ERP), video editing, financial modeling, sophisticated data acquisition, scientific computing, and Web content a distant memory.

The RamSan-710 offers up to 5 TB of usable capacity in a small, 1U rackmount unit. This SSD has the following key features:

  • The World's Fastest Storage®: Sustained random bandwidth up to 5 GB/second.
  • Next-Generation Series-7 Product Family: RamSan Series-7 is the 7th generation of the RamSan product family, originating from the first RamSan in 2000. All Series-7 RamSan products deliver cost-effective performance and reliability.
  • 8 Gbit Fibre Channel: The RamSan-710 comes with new dual ported 8 Gbit Fibre Channel controllers.
  • QDR InfiniBand: The RamSan-710 can be equipped with up to two dual ported QDR InfiniBand controllers.
  • Fault Tolerant Flash (FTF): The Flash used in the RamSan-710 is enterprise grade SLC Flash. Each Flash card in the RamSan-710 includes on-board RAID protection to protect against chip failure. In addition, an advanced chip-level ECC provides multiple regions of bit correction per block.
  • Active Spare: One FTF card can be designated as an active-spare that works hand-in-hand with the chip level RAID. If one of the cards experiences a failure that degrades its RAID protection, the system will immediately migrate the data on that card to the spare to return to a redundant state.
  • Wear Leveling: The RamSan-710 includes wear-leveling technology that protects the underlying Flash media by spreading out writes and maximizing the write life of the system.
  • Completely Non-Volatile: Flash memory is inherently non-volatile. Batteries are incorporated into the design anywhere RAM buffers are used with enough power to synchronize the buffers to Flash.
  • Unparalleled Scalability: A single 1U chassis upgrades from 1 to 5 TB of Flash storage and two Fibre Channel ports or two InfiniBand ports. Multiple units can be added to meet any capacity or performance requirement.
  • Batteries: The RamSan-710 incorporates N+1 batteries to allow for orderly shutdown.

The RamSan-710 offers scalable performance and affordable high capacity that is both space and power efficient. A single unit provides up to 5TB of reliable Single Level Cell (SLC) Flash, with solid performance of up to 5 GB per second.

The RamSan-710 packs a lot of power into a small package, occupying only 1U of rack space. To achieve similar performance, hard disk solutions would require over 1,300 drives, occupy almost 100 disk enclosures requiring seven racks, consume over 16,000 Watts, and cost over a million dollars by the time the enclosures and controllers were included.

Each RamSan-710 unit can support two 8 Gb Fibre Channel or two QDR InfiniBand ports. Installation and management are simple, with embedded management capabilities and clear displays. One or more RamSan-710s can easily be integrated into a mixed storage infrastructure and monitored and managed through a common management framework.

SLC

The RamSan-710 uses SLC NAND Flash as its storage medium. SLC is superior Flash technology as it is faster, more resilient, and much easier to manage than its consumer-grade counterpart, MLC. In addition, the RamSan-710’s SLC Flash memory is completely non-volatile.

Active Spare

At the system level, the RamSan-710 allows you to designate one of the cards inside the system as an Active Spare that works hand-in-hand with the chip level RAID on each of our boards. If one of the cards experiences a chip failure that degrades its RAID protection, the system will immediately migrate the data on that card to the spare to return to a redundant state. At that point, the degraded card will be inactive and can be swapped during the next scheduled maintenance downtime. Having the active-spare means that a faulty card can be swapped in a matter of minutes without the need to migrate all 5 TB of data off and back on to the RamSan®.

Manageability

Logical Storage Units (LUNs) can be designated in multiple configurations, including the option of assigning a separate LUN to each of the RamSan-710’s Flash cards. This flexibility allows you to mirror LUNs for increased data protection.

Automatic Error Checking

Data integrity is provided through two different methods. Each Flash chip incorporates an ECC data field within the chip for initial checking. Additionally, each Flash controller in the RamSan-710 is responsible for 10 Flash chips using TMS' patented Variable Stripe RAID (VSR), eliminating any single chip or plane failure from corrupting data storage. The Flash wear-leveling algorithm runs on the embedded PowerPC processor, providing real-time quality assurance independent of the host computer.

Fault Resilient

The RamSan-710 was designed from the chip up with the enterprise in mind. With its onboard processor design, two levels of error protection, Variable Stripe RAID functionality for the Flash, use of SLC Flash, and a sophisticated wear leveling algorithm, the RamSan-710 is a truly enterprise ready, resilient SSD.

Wear Leveling

The RamSan-710 includes Texas Memory System’s proprietary wear-leveling technology. This system protects the SSD's Flash media by spreading out writes and maximizing the write life of the system.

Next-Generation Series-7™ Product Family

RamSan Series-7 is the 7th generation of the RamSan product family, originating from the first RamSan in 2000. All Series-7 RamSan products deliver cost-effective performance and reliability.

Storage

Performance

Interfaces

Management

Mechanical