RamSan-810

The RamSan-810 can speed up high-performance, read-heavy enterprise storage area network (SAN) applications like:

• Data warehouses and online analytical
  processing (OLAP) databases
• Content delivery networks
• Sequential data collection

Reliability

• Standard chip-level RAID and patented Variable Stripe RAID™ (VSR™) protection against plane and chip failures
• Enhanced Error Correcting Code (ECC) protection against block failures
  
• Available integrated spare Flash card limiting maintenance downtime
  
• Redundant power supplies with active failover protection against single-source power issues

Architecture
The RamSan-810 continues the TMS tradition of high bandwidth, low latency systems with most control logic implemented in hardware. It is built with 21 Flash boards powered by the proprietary Texas Memory Systems Series-7 Flash Controller™. The boards are connected through a high-speed internal data switch, along with two dual-port Fibre Channel or InfiniBand interfaces and a management controller offering an
Ethernet interface.

Series-7 Flash Controller™
Exclusively available from Texas Memory Systems, the Series-7 Flash Controller™ is the seventh generation of RamSan Flash controllers. Its main features over other architectures include:

• Better performance. The highly parallel architecture of the Series-7 Flash Controller takes full advantage of the performance of each Flash chip by minimizing individual FPGA load. This parallel architecture is a core
  component of the RamSan design and is why the RamSan is the uncontested performance leader.
• More reliability features. Patented Variable Stripe RAID™ (VSR™) technology, available exclusively in new Texas Memory Systems products, efficiently bypasses failed Flash planes and chips. Enhanced error correcting code (ECC) techniques help mitigate block failures.
• Improved latency for small requests. The Series-7 Flash Controller has new optimizations for small (512-byte) requests that significantly decrease latency.

Variable Stripe RAID™ (VSR™)
The exclusive patented Variable Stripe RAID™ feature offered by the Series-7 Flash Controller reduces business interruptions and improves mean time between failures (MTBF) by providing a higher level of protection against common Flash plane failures and less common Flash device failures. VSR complements standard error-correction
techniques to enable continued system operation in the event of Flash failures. It improves on traditional RAID by providing greater stripe size granularity and variable stripe sizes, allowing the controller to skip bad areasrather than failing or replacing them with a full spare chip. VSR accomplishes this by allowing XOR RAID stripes to
be dynamically resized for distribution across fewer Flash devices. When a Flash device failure is detected, data is migrated to new stripes that do not include the failed chip or plane.

Ultimate Write Performance and Reliability
The RamSan-810 includes 30% overprovisioning (19% overprovisioned space and 11% RAID overhead—13 TB raw vs. 10 TB usable) on each card to deliver industry leading performance and reliability to its users. Overprovisioning is the practice of including additional space that is not presented to the user to increase write
performance.