RamSan-70

Ram-San 70 Overview

450-900 GB SLC Flash storage offering 600,000 IOPS (2 GB/s random sustained external throughput) and ECC and RAID capabilities

The RamSan-70 sets a new standard for high performance, fitting the world’s fastest PCIe-based Flash SSD onto a half-length PCIe card. In fact, the RamSan-70 is so powerful that we call it the “900 GB Gorilla”. Competing SSDs cannot match its sustained performance, reliability, and density. Since it is built on a PCIe card, it is simple and affordable enough for mainstream businesses and applications. Designed on a half-length board, the RamSan-70 can be used with the most popular compact servers on the market. As the first member of the Texas Memory Systems Series-7™ family, the RamSan-70 is the future of solid state storage, showcasing the company’s 30+ years of SSD innovation and 10+ years of PCI bus-based architectural expertise.

The RamSan-70 uses Texas Memory Systems’ powerful Fault Tolerant Flash (FTF) architecture and comprehensive on-board management architecture, meaning the SSD has negligible impact on valuable host resources. Because of its nonvolatile SLC Flash storage media, data is not lost during server crashes or power loss. Flash translation tables are held in capacitor-backed RAM that is written to Flash in the event of power loss, so users don't have to waste time waiting for indexes to rebuild when power is reconnected. The RamSan-70’s raw speed and power mean its data transfer rates are much faster than competing Flash drives and hundreds of times faster than traditional mechanical hard disks.

The card is easily installed, even in most compact servers. You can install the RamSan-70 in minutes, providing extraordinarily fast caching and accelerated applications when you need them most.

When you need a simple, economical choice to accelerate single-server applications requiring large, fast buffer areas or to speed up applications that are random access intensive, the 900-GB Gorilla is the clear choice. The RamSan-70 can make the wait times associated with data warehousing, enterprise resource planning (ERP), video editing, financial modeling, sophisticated data acquisition, scientific computing, and Web content a distant memory.


Product Features

The RamSan-70 offers up to 900 GB of usable capacity (1.25 TB raw capacity) in a half-length PCIe card. This SSD has the following key features:

• The World's Fastest Storage®: Sustained I/O rates up to 600,000 IOPS
  (at 4K block sizes) for reads or 250,000 IOPS for writes, and bandwidth up to
  2 GB/second.

• Next-Generation Series-7™ Product Family: RamSan Series-7 is the 7th generation
  of the RamSan product family, originating from the first RamSan in 2000. All Series-7
  RamSan products deliver cost-effective performance and reliability.

• PCIe Interface: The RamSan-70 is an internal SSD that uses the fast, ubiquitous
  PCIe Generation 2 x8 connection. PCIe connectivity can be a powerful feature for
  high-end workstations, smaller reporting database systems, and other environments
  where an internal solution is an advantage.

• Small Form Factor: While many PCIe SSDs are built on full-length cards, the
  RamSan-70 uses a half-length card. This smaller form factor means that the
  RamSan-70 can be added to a wider range of servers.

• Fault Tolerant Flash (FTF): The Flash used in the RamSan-70 is enterprise grade SLC
  Flash. The RamSan-70 includes on-board RAID protection to protect against chip failure.
  An advanced chip-level ECC provides multiple regions of bit correction per block.

• Wear Leveling: The RamSan-70 includes wear-leveling technology that protects the
  underlying Flash media by spreading out writes and maximizing the write life of
  the system.

• Completely Non-Volatile: Flash memory is inherently non-volatile, and onboard
  capacitors keep RAM used for translation tables powered long enough for dumping
  data in the event of a power loss, so no time is wasted rebuilding tables when
  power goes down.

• Scalable PCIe: The RamSan-70’s standard configuration includes 450 GB of Flash
  storage. However, a mezzanine card adds another 450 GB for a total of 900 GB of
  usable capcity in one standard half-length PCIe slot.


Details

The RamSan-70 delivers a complete storage system on a half-length PCIe card. It minimizes latency between processors and storage, and is easily installed in minutes. The SSD delivers up to 900 GB of usable Flash (1,280 GB raw). 450 GB on the main card plus 450 GB on the optional mezzanine card make it the highest capacity Single Level Cell (SLC)-based PCIe Flash card on the market. SLC Flash ensures the greatest possible performance and reliability, unlike the consumer-grade Multi Level Cell (MLC) Flash some competitors use in their storage systems. The RamSan-70 also incorporates 17% overprovisioned Flash capacity for write acceleration and two levels of data protection: ECC and RAID.

The RamSan-70 offers unparalleled sustained performance, delivering 600,000 random read IOPS. With its fast PCIe connection, the RamSan-70 has a direct connection to main memory that eliminates additional costs related to disk controllers, disk cables, and disk chassis.

CPU
One of the greatest assets of the RamSan-70 is its onboard CPU. With an onboard processor to manage all Flash memory functions, the card stands head and shoulders above the rest in the PCIe Flash SSD market. The design of the RamSan-70 limits the costly theft of CPU cycles and RAM space from the host system, allowing the host system to do its core job of processing and managing application requests and needs.

Scalable
The RamSan-70’s standard configuration includes 450 GB of Flash storage. However, a mezzanine card adds another 450 GB for a total of 900 GB of usable capacity. This flexible design allows you to upgrade on your own schedule.

SLC
The RamSan-70 uses SLC NAND Flash as its storage medium. SLC is superior Flash technology as it is faster, more resilient, and much easier to manage than its consumer-grade counterpart, MLC. In addition, the RamSan-70’s SLC Flash memory is completely non-volatile.

Manageability
The RamSan-70 is easy to install and easy to manage. Once its lightweight driver is installed, the RamSan-70 appears as a standard block device. At this point it may be partitioned and formatted with any file system, just like standard enterprise hard disk drive arrangements.

Automatic Error Checking
Data integrity is provided through two different methods. Each Flash chip incorporates an ECC data field within the chip for initial checking. Additionally, each Flash controller on the RamSan-70 is responsible for 10 Flash chips in a modified RAID-5 configuration, eliminating any single chip failure from corrupting data storage. The Flash wear-leveling algorithm runs on the embedded PowerPC processor, providing real-time quality assurance independent of the host computer.

Fault Resilient
The RamSan-70 was designed from the chip up with the enterprise in mind. With its onboard processor design, two levels of error protection, RAID functionality for the Flash, use of SLC Flash, and a sophisticated wear leveling algorithm, the RamSan-70 is a truly enterprise ready, resilient PCIe SSD.

Wear Leveling
The RamSan-70 includes Texas Memory System’s proprietary wear-leveling technology. This system protects the card’s underlying Flash media by spreading out writes and maximizing the write life of the system.

Next-Generation Series-7™ Product Family
RamSan Series-7 is the 7th generation of the RamSan product family, originating from the first RamSan in 2000. All Series-7 RamSan products deliver cost-effective performance and reliability.


Specifications

Storage
• Capacity (Raw): 640 - 1,280 GB
• Capacity (Usable): 450 - 900 GB
• Storage Medium: SLC Flash

Performance
• Maximum Bandwidth: 2 GB/s
• Read IOPS: 600 K IOPS
• Read Latency: 70 microseconds
• Write IOPS: 250 K IOPS
• Write Latency: 30 microseconds

Interfaces
• PCI Express Lanes: 8 lanes
• PCI Express Version: 2.0

Mechanical
• Dimensions: half-length, full-height
• Form Factor: PCIe

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