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RamSan-300

Product Information (PDF)

RamSan-300 highlights: Over 200,000 random I/Os per second. 1500 MB/s random sustained external throughput. Full array of hardware redundancy to ensure availability. IBM Chipkill technology protects against memory errors up to and including loss of an entire memory chip. Exclusive Active Backup™ software constantly backs up data without any performance degradation. Other SSDs only begin to backup data once power is already lost.

Product Highlights

The RamSan-300, TMS' eighth generation solid state disk, is simply the most advanced SSD on the market today. Its fast DDRRAM storage is ideal for storing performance-demanding data and accelerating application performance. In fact, the RamSan-300 is The World's Fastest Storage™ Performance

TMS' numerous customers have seen real-world performance increases from 2x to 25x simply by installing a single RamSan. It plugs into servers or fabrics through basic Fibre Channel or InfiniBand connections and appears simply as a very, very fast disk to the network, able to act as any disk or storage system might. The RamSan-300 can accelerate numerous applications across industries. It is best known for drastic performance gains in OLTP, batch processing, and other intensive operations.

Reliability
There is no tradeoff in reliability for all this performance. The RamSan-300 includes hot swappable redundancies wherever physical wear is a factor, such as power supplies and backup hard disks. It also includes two independent internal UPS systems to ensure that no power loss or power supply failure will stop the RamSan from performing its internal backup procedures. Redundant cooling fans and redundant failover data ports (optional) are also part of the sophisticated design.

Interoperability
The RamSan-300 is designed to look like a disk to the network. Therefore, it is highly interoperable and works in virtually any enterprise environment. It is installed in numerous environments, including Apple OS X, AIX, Solaris, Linux, and Windows. Hardware from Fibre Channel and InfiniBand vendors including Cisco, Emulex, Brocade, McData, Mellanox, QLogic, LSI Logic, and ATTO easily interoperates with the RamSan

Active Backup and Chipkill Technology: The Newest Innovations in SSD
Exclusive to the RamSan is Active Backup™ software. Other SSDs and cache system can only "destage" data from RAM to backup disks once power is already lost. This means that data is never backed up during normal operation and the time-to-complete-backup after power loss is unacceptably long. A RamSan-300 with Active Backup can continuously backup data on RAM to the internal backup hard disks without impacting performance. This means in an emergency situation, data is anywhere from 60-100% on the backup hard drives already.

RamSan-300 systems take reliability even farther by implementing IBM Chipkill technology. Standard error correcting code (ECC) implementations correct single-bit data errors in memory chips but cannot correct the multi-bit errors that can result in data integrity issues. Chipkill technology allows a memory system to correct a multi-bit failure up to and including a total chip failure. 

Soft Error Scrubbing
The RamSan-300 is the first solid state disk to include soft error scrubbing. All solid state disks can correct a single bit error before sending data to the server as a part of their ECC protection. The RamSan-300, however, goes a step further by scrubbing; re-writing the corrected data to memory and then verifying the re-write to determine if a memory chip has a failure (a hard error) or if radiation transients caused the single bit error (a soft error). Systems that do not scrub single bit memory errors will either a) report errors to a system log that will eventually encourage replacement of a memory board or b) hide these errors thus leaving a potentially unsafe memory board in the system. Research on this topic suggests that 90% of single bit errors are soft errors. In these cases, the RamSan-300 will correct the error through the scrubbing process and prevent unnecessary downtime to replace the memory board.

Technical Specs

I/Os Per Second 200,000

Capacity 16-32 GB

Bandwidth 1500 MB per second

Latency Less than 15 microseconds

Size 5.25" (3U) X 16"

Power Consumption (peak) 250 Watts

Weight (maximum) 70 lbs

Fibre Channel Connection

• 4-Gigabit Fibre Channel (2-Gigabit capable) or
• 2-Gigabit Fibre Channel (1-Gigabit capable)
• 2 ports standard; up to 4 ports available
• Supports point-to-point, arbitrated loop, and switched fabric topologies
• Interoperable with Fibre Channel Host Bus Adaptors, switches, and operating systems

InfiniBand Connection

• 4x InfiniBand (10-Gigabit)
• 1 port standard; up to 2 ports available
• Supports SRP upper level protocol
• Interoperable with InfiniBand Host Channel Adaptors, switches, and operating systems

Management

• Browser-enabled system monitoring, management, and configuration
• Telnet management capability
• Front panel displays system status and provides basic management functionality

LUN Support

• 1 to 1024 LUNs with variable capacity per LUN
• Flexible assignment of LUNs to ports
• Hardware LUN masking

Data Retention

• Non-volatile solid state disk
• Redundant internal batteries power the system for 25 minutes after power loss
• Automatically backs up data to disk at 60 MB/sec

Reliability and Availability

• Chipkill technology protects data against memory errors up to and including loss of an entire memory chip
• Internal redundancies
  • Power supplies and fans
  • Backup battery power
  • Backup hard disk drives (mirrored)
• Hot-swappable components
  • Two backup hard drives (front access)
  • Power supplies
• Active:Passive Fibre Channel failover (optional)
• Soft Error Scrubbing -   When a single bit error occurs on a read, the RamSan willautomatically re-write the data to memory thus scrubbing soft errors. Following the re-write the system re-reads to verify the data is corrected.

Backup Procedures

• Supports two backup modes that are configurable per system or per LUN:
• Data Sync mode - synchronizes data to redundant internal disk drives before shutdown or with power loss
• Active BackupTM mode (optional) - backs up data constantly to internal redundant disks without impacting system performance.

Support & Warranty