IBM launches first NAS device

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IBM has launched it first ever foray into the network attached storage market with the Scale Out Network Attached Storage (SONAS) product.

Designed as an appliance for the company’s Scale Out NAS global virtual file server, it has up to 30 interface nodes and 60 storage nodes, in a cluster based on IBM’s General Parallel File System [GPFS].

It offers 10 Gigabit Ethernet and 20Gbps InfiniBand connections and can handle up to 14.4 petabytes of data across 240 spaces for either 1TB or 2TB drives.

The device comes with RAID controllers as well as snapshot ability and tiered storage through the company’s Tivoli Storage Manager software.

“Today’s modern analytics-based applications demand multiple processes and servers (sometimes numbering in the 100s) simultaneously running against hundreds of terabytes of data of live production data, streaming in from expanding number of smarter sensors, input devices [and] users,” said John Sing, an executive IT consultant on the SONAS team, in a blog post.

“[This produces] digital image-intensive results that must be programmatically sent to an ever increasing number of mobile devices in geographically dispersed storage [and requires] parallel performance levels that used to be the domain only of High Performance Computing.”

“This is a major paradigm shift in storage – and that is the solution and storage capabilities that IBM SONAS is designed to address.”

Pricing will be between $250,000 and $500,000 when the device goes to market in April.

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