Coraid ZX: High-Performance NAS
Coraid ZX is a family of NAS servers that combines an innovative and feature-rich file system with scale-out, massively parallel Ethernet SAN technology.
NAS Built on Coraid EtherDrive
Unstructured data is growing at a faster rate than ever before within enterprises. Companies are grappling with the ballooning cost and complexity of managing block and file storage infrastructure at scale. Traditional approaches to deploying storage for block- and file-based data do nothing to reduce the operational complexity of storage management.
Coraid ZX is a modern, feature-rich NAS appliance based on the Zettabyte File System (ZFS) and designed to work with Coraid EtherDrive block storage. Coraid ZX is ideally suited for public and private cloud environments, video and big data applications, where rapid scalability, ease of use and flexibility are important in a file-based storage system.
Coraid ZX leverages the open storage architecture capability of Coraid EtherDrive to bring together two best-of-breed systems – a high performance file system that can scale to a Zettabyte of storage and scale-out block storage infrastructure that offers simplicity and flexibility at a fraction of the cost of Fibre Channel storage.
Leveraging a shared pool of elastic block storage, the ZX-Series protects sensitive data and maximizes storage efficiency for public and private clouds at a fraction of the cost of legacy solutions. Administrators can easily deploy a pool of block storage within minutes, which can then be carved up and used by any number of front-end applications and file systems.
Scaling a ZX-based storage system is as simple as adding more EtherDrive SRX shelves for capacity. The use of Layer 2 Ethernet to connect storage shelves to Coraid ZX appliances obviates the need for complex, error-prone setup, configuration and multi-pathing.
By using the highly scalable Ethernet SAN technology in conjunction with a best-in-class NAS offering, customers can deploy a unified storage solution that addresses a broad set of use cases and applications. By using the rich set of storage features that ZFS offers, such as remote replication, snapshots and clones, compression, thin provisioning and deduplication, enterprises can build highly efficient and flexible file storage systems.
| Feature | Description |
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| Ethernet SAN Integration | Integration of the NAS head with Ethernet SAN block storage offers multi-petabyte scalability and simplicity |
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Flexible Deployment
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Storage can be deployed across multiple physical locations connected by layer-2 Ethernet
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Thin Provisioning
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By allocating disk storage space based on what is actually used, storage can be efficiently shared among multiple users and applications
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Compression
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Inline compression saves space and enables faster writes
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Deduplication
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Inline block-level deduplication further reduces the footprint of data stored on disk
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Snapshots
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Copy-on-write transactional model allows snapshots to be created quickly with no additional effort
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Clones
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Writeable snapshots create independent versions of file systems that share a set of blocks
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Remote Replication
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Efficient asynchronous remote replication enables inexpensive near-continuous data protection (near CDP)
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Hybrid Storage Pools
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Hybrid pools enable an optimized storage hierarchy containing DRAM, flash cache, and HDDs
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High Availability
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Optional clustered NAS front-end support for high availability applications
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Seamless Multiprotocol Integration
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NFS and CIFS file protocols allow secure data sharing between Microsoft Windows, Linux, and UNIX environments
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