Unified Storage Appliance Powered by Nexenta and Supermicro Review

#Nexenta and #Supermicro have teamed together to deliver what they're calling the #UnifiedStorageAppliance. The appliance leverages Nexenta's #NexentaStor 5.0 software to deliver block-and-file storage and #NexentaFusion for storage management and analytics combined with Supermicro's hardware and sales/support infrastructure. The combination brings together a software defined solution that's already tested and validated on the Supermicro hardware and is orderable from Supermicro as a pre-loaded and pre-configured complete solution. The Unified Storage Appliance comes in five configurations depending on customer need, ranging from a capacity-centric 4U 3.5" hard drive version that can support flash cache, to a 2U 24-bay all-flash configuration that's rated up to 180,000 mixed 8KB IOPS. Each main unit can also support two expansion JBODs for additional capacity. Because Nexenta is the underlying software, the solution is full of enterprise data services like replication, in-line data reduction and space optimized snapshots/clones. Included with the appliance is a next-day 3-year service program (4-hour response optional) and Supermicro offers remote installation service to help customers get off to a good start.  Twenty-four bays of 3.84TB of capacity is a lot of flash storage, but Nexenta and Supermicro allow users to increase that with two more all-flash JBODs. Users can add 48 more bays or 72 total, which would bring the total raw capacity up to 276TB of flash. The companies also offer a larger hybrid model for those looking for more cost-effective storage where performance is not the primary concern. While delivering tons of capacity, the array also offers several data services, including unlimited file system size, unlimited snapshots and clones, inline data reduction, storage quality of service, scheduled snapshot-based replication, and continuous asynchronous replication. This review centers on one of the all-flash configurations which includes 24 3.8TB SAS SSDs. Unified Storage Appliance powered by Nexenta & Supermicro specifications: Model Number: SSG-2028R-NEX2040 Form Factor: 2U Storage Storage Media: 3.84TB SAS SSD Disk Configuration: RAIDZ2: 4 + 2 Raw Capacity: 46TB to 276TB Usable Capacity: 30TB to 184TB Effective Capacity: 90TB to 552TB Performance Max 8KB (Read/Write): 180K IOPS Max Bandwidth Read: 8GB/s Expansion chassis: Up to 2x 2U/24 bay - all flash JBODs supported (72 bays total) Protocol support: NFSv3 NFSv4 CIFS SMB3 iSCSI Fibre Channel Ecosystem Support: Windows Linux VMware VAAI VMware VVOL VMware Multi-Tenant vCenter Plugin OpenStack Cinder & Manila Hyper-V SMB 3 ODX Docker Volume Plug-In Data services: Unlimited File System Size Unlimited Snapshots & Clones Inline Data Reduction Storage Quality of Service Scheduled Snapshot Based Replication Continuous Asynchronous Replication Management: Command Line Interface Self-Documenting REST API SNMP NexentaFusion: Single pane of glass multi-appliance management, Advanced Analytics, Simple Operations Design and Build The front of the device (pictured above) looks very similar to several Supermicro chassis. Along the front are the twenty-four 2.5” bays laid out in a vertical manner. On the right-hand side is the power button and on either side are the indicator lights.  The back of the device is split evenly into two sections with the same layout. On the upper left-hand side is the PSU. Beneath the PSU are the two cooling fans. Immediately next to the cooling fans are to RJ-45 ports. To the right of this are three PCIe slots, including SAS JBOD expansion and 4x 10GbE ports per controller. Below those is the breakout port and USB ports. Management Nexenta has come out with its latest version of its open-source based storage product, NexentaStor. This version comes with Nexenta Fusion, which is a standalone VM or Docker container that manages multiple NexentaStor systems. This is a departure from the original product that had an integrated management system and ran on the same hardware as the actual storage controllers. Since there is only one Nexenta system installed, it really doesn't display the abilities of switching between storage systems easily, but centralized management of multiple systems is always a solid way to win the support of a storage administrator. The login screen has the standard username/password login dialog box that is standard for most systems.

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