Nexsan and FalconStor Collaborate On Efficient Storage

SAN vendor Nexsan and de-duplication vendor FalconStor have jointly developed the Nessan DeDupe SG appliance, which uses Nexsans power efficient storage system and FalconStor's deduplication software.

August 10, 2009

2 Min Read
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SAN vendor Nexsan and de-duplication vendor FalconStor have jointly developed the Nessan DeDupe SG appliance, which uses Nexsan's power efficient storage system and FalconStor's deduplication software. The DeDupe SG efficiently uses disk space by deduplicating redundant data, reducing the number of drives needed, and NexSan's  AutoMAID (Massive Array of Idle Disks) reduces power consumption by slowing or stopping idle drives.  The DeDupe SG is available immediately starting at $49,000.

Data deduplication can reduce as much as 20% of storage costs, a significant impact on the amount of data that is written to disk. The DeDupe SG family includes 6 models ranging from 4TB of useable capacity, 80TB compressed capacity assuming  20:1 deduplication, to the DeDupe SG-52, which offers 52TB of useable capacity and 1040 TB compressed capacity assuming 20:1 deduplication. The focus of NexSan and FalconStor is a plug-and-play storage appliance offering NFS/CIFS access, many to one replication and a built in back-up agent to streamline operation.

NexSan claims DeDupe SG has better back-up performance than comparable Data Domain appliances being acquired by EMC. NexSan compared the low end DeDupe SG-4, that writes 150MB/s, to the Data Domain DD510 appliance, that can write 120MB/s. On the high end, NexSan claimed the DeDupe SG 52 can write 750 MB/s compared to Data Domains DD690 that writes at 450MB/s.

Further savings are achieved by reducing power consumption requirements. NexSan offers three levels of MAID power management which they claim can have significant power savings:

  • Level 1 achieves a 20% power reduction by parking the drive heads when idle. On the first request, the head activates and the appliances responds in less than a second.

  • Level 2 achieves a 40% reduction in power by slowing the drive to 4000 RPM and will respond to the first data request in less than 15 seconds.

  • Level 3 achieves a 60% power reduction by putting the drive into a light sleep. The first request takes up to 30 seconds

Once the drives drop into a MAID power mode, the 1st data request takesmore time to complete because the drive has to return to normaloperation. Once in normal operation, there is no delay.

On MAID level 3, NexSan say an appliance consuming 700 watts drops to 300 watts. That is a significant power reduction. The NexSan DeDupe SG product line is well-suited for environments where you need to keep infrequently accessed data close at hand. Using dedupication and AutoMAID,  the appliance is making efficient use of disk space and power.

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