Tech Field Day, Part One: Nimble Storage

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Tech Field Day, Part One: Nimble Storage

Posted by Howard Marks on July 27, 2010

I had the high-quality fortune previous melody to use two existence in the corporation of a dozen self-governing bloggers, pundits, geeks and additional consideration leaders in storage, networking and virtualization at GestaltIT's Seattle tech field day. We sat, not so politely, from side to side the customary bereavement by PowerPoint and live demos as of a series of of good reputation ranging as of persons I hysterics healthy (F5 and Compellent) to persons similar to Nimble Storage, a start-up brave sufficient to approach out of stealth in front of the Tech Field Day crowd.

While Sharon Fisher broke the Nimble Storage information as it happened here, I establish completely tale forceful sufficient so as to a bound dive counting be useful. Nimble's main maintain to fame is the mixture of flash reminiscence as a enormous appreciate writing and mark from side to side cache by means of 1TB SATA drives to make a far above the ground presentation scheme so as to can not merely act as a main iSCSI collection but too amass sufficient snapshots to put back conservative backups.

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The essential CS220 inexpensive a 640GB flash cache by means of 12 1TB SATA drives for 9TB of useable ability and come again? Nimble's folks maintain is the equal of 108TB of backup data. Like StorWise or still NTFS, contain do LZ method compression on information preceding to saving it. They after that use completely own log-based folder scheme so as to forever writes filled stripes to the RAID rear end, creation a great deal random I/O--which SATA drives don't grip well--look additional similar to sequential I/O, construct SATA drives are attractive high-quality at.

Nimbus name redirect on mark snapshots, construct unlike the additional ordinary copy on mark variety, be hypothetical to contain incomplete crash on presentation still if you retain a big figure of snapshots for a extended time. Of route snapshots unaccompanied aren't a substitute for backups since  an explosive authority provide failure, or the like, so as to destroys the scheme too destroys the information and the snapshots. My pal W, Curtis Preston, who was too at the event, has written so as to a mixture of snapshots and replication might put back each day backups, but it counting motionless require a metadata directory to assist you discover the account of a folder you desire to restore.

Today, Nimble doesn't fairly let you to put back by means of backup system. They can merely replicate recognized by two understanding so you contain to decide recognized by a restricted copy for quick restores and a remote copy for ,tragedy protection. They contain movements cascading replication in a prospect account of the software.

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