Qsan XCubeSAN series

2022

XCubeSAN 5300

On October 26, 2022, SAN Technology announced the release of the updated XCubeSAN 5300 enterprise-level block array series, which is suitable for today's enterprise applications such as critical data centers, high-performance computing, virtualization, or multimedia environments.

XCubeSAN 5300

According to the company, the XCubeSAN 5300 series products have a modular, fault-tolerant design and are available in a wide range of form factors and host connectivity options. The SAN XS5300 range includes a 2U density with 26 bays for small form factor drives XS5326 with both two active controllers and one controller. In the database, the XS5300 series offers 8 GbE iSCSI (SFP +) 10 ports per system with the ability to connect up to 24 host ports in a dual-controller system, which provides direct connection to several hosts without switches. Additional host cards include 32 Gb Fibre Channel Gb/16 and 25 GbE iSCSI GbE/10 options. 1.8 million IOPS and 20 Gbps bandwidth make XS5300 series comparable in performance and ultra-low latency to all-flash arrays.

The XS5300 series is equipped with an XEVO storage management system with an intuitive graphical interface. XEVO also provides enterprise-class features including support for all basic RAID levels, RAID EE support, thin provisioning, SSD caching, automatic tearing, and more. Using an intuitive dashboard and reporting system, managers can analyze and monitor the state of the system in real time.

QSAN XS5300 has several key capabilities:

• Optimized RAID support technology. XEVO supports 15 different RAID levels to provide fault tolerance storages for additional protection. Hot spare drives enhance RAID protection by automatically replacing failed drives and starting the recovery process without user intervention.
• Storage efficiency. Thin provisioning technology is built into all QSAN products, allowing users to flexibly allocate disk space based on the minimum required. SSD caching and auto-tearing options optimize performance by moving frequently used data to the SSD.
• Backup features. To protect against data loss and downtime, XEVO provides full array-based backup functionality, including local backup and remote replication. With snapshot technology, you can build a robust disaster recovery security network that meets your RPO and RTO requirements.
• Updated data experience. XEVO optimizes complex IT processes at all stages. QSLife helps users monitor the status of disks. QReport analyzes the use of DSS and generates reports for the administrator to predict the use of DSS in the future
• Virtualization. VMware and Microsoft Hyper-V certification allows the user to quickly deploy a high-performance virtualization environment for business growth.
• Scalability. XS5300 provides extensive scalability by connecting XCubeDAS or third-party JBOD expansion shelves to 546 drives or 16.7 PB of raw capacity for future data growth.
• Cache-to-Flash protection. XS5300 offers battery-free cache protection. Instead of a battery module, compact flash memory and supercapacitors are used, which have advantages over batteries in protecting cached data during a sudden power outage.

The XS5300 series supports popular operating systems, is suitable for use for critical tasks. Moreover, the XS5300 series offers optimal QSAN performance.

XCubeSAN 3300

On July 12, 2022, QSAN Technology announced the XCubeSAN 3300 series, affordable entry-level block DSS for the SMB segment.

According to the company, the XCubeSAN 3300 series products are presented in different form factors with a wide range of interfaces and complete duplication of the main components for proper fault tolerance. The DSS SAN XS3300 line include a XS3326 model that offers proper density in a 2U package with 26 small form factor drives with both two active/active controllers and one controller. A large selection of expansion cards in addition to the built-in 8 iSCSI 10 GbE ports provides flexibility and allows up to 24 host ports to be used on a dual-controller system with direct connection to multiple hosts without the use of expensive switches. Additional host cards include 32 Gb/16 Gb Fibre Channel and 25 GbE/10 GbE iSCSI. QSAN XS3300 provides 1.3 million I/O per second and has a bandwidth of 12.8 Gb/s, and is suitable for even the most demanding workloads.

XCubeSAN 3300

The XS3300 series arrays are equipped with an XEVO control system with an intuitive graphical interface. XEVO also provides enterprise storage features including support for all RAID levels, RAID EE with fast rebill, thin provisioning, SSD caching, automatic tearing, and more. With an intuitive dashboard and reporting system, managers can optimize DSS usage and monitor storage health in real time.

QSAN XS3300 has several key features:

• Optimized RAID level technology. XEVO supports 15 different RAID levels to provide storage redundancy for additional protection. The global hot feature reservations enhances RAID protection by automatically replacing failed drives and starting the recovery process without user intervention.
• Storage efficiency. Efficient thin provisioning technology is built into all QSAN products, allowing users to flexibly allocate disk space based on the minimum required. Additional SSD cache and automatic tiering optimizes performance by moving frequently used data to the SSD.
• Backup features. To protect against data loss and downtime, XEVO provides a complete set of backup features, including local backup and remote replication. Using snapshots technology, you can create a disaster recovery network that meets the required RPO and RTO.
• XEVO optimizes all processes. QSLife is a drive mining system that helps the user monitor the status of disks. QReport analyzes the use of the array and generates reports for the administrator to determine how to act in critical situations to avoid the risk of data corruption.
• virtualizations Support. Certified VMware and, Microsoft Hyper-V XEVO is an operating system for DSS that allows the user to deploy a high-performance, low-latency virtualization environment to grow their business.
• Scalability. XS3300 provides extensive scalability by connecting XCubeDAS or third-party shelves with up to 546 drives or 16.7 PB of raw capacity for future data growth.
• Cache-to-Flash memory protection. XS3300 offers battery-free cache protection. Instead of a battery, a compact flash memory and capacitor are used, which have advantages over batteries to protect the cache during power outages. electric power

2019: Western Digital Ultrastar Data60 Module Certification for XCubeSAN DSS Expansion

On September 9, 2019, QSAN Technology announced a technology partnership with Western Digital to expand its storage systems with the Ultrastar Data60, a fault-tolerant 60-drive high-density expansion module in a 4-unit package. Read more here.

2017

DSS Series XS5200/XS3200

On March 20, 2017, Qsan announced the release of the DSS SAN XS5200/XS3200 series.

The series is built on the Intel Xeon D-1500 processor platform, optimized for high-performance storage and cloud solutions.

The device supports:

• SAS 3.0 12Gb interface.
• two expansion cards for communication with hosts,
• 2 ports 10G Base-T, Flash module M.2
• capacitor for cache protection,
• Wake-on-SAS technology.

The capacity of the system is scalable:

• connecting additional XCubeDAS expansion shelves
• performance - by adding a second controller and interface expansion cards.

The core of the XCubeSAN family is the SANOS 4.0 operating system with support for QCache (SSD caching) and QTiering (Auto Tiering) technologies to fully use the functionality of solid-state drives. The XS5200/XS3200 series is equipped with mechanisms to prevent possible data loss.

The XS5200/XS3200 series is designed for critical applications that require high availability, reliability, security, performance, and scalability.

DSS XS3200, (2017)

All hardware modules of the system are duplicated. A hot swap is available for ease of maintenance. In XS5200/XS3200, you can update the built-in ON without interruption.

• RAID controllers operating in Active-Active mode with cache mirroring
• ALUA and automatic failover support
• Fully duplicated hot-swappable components
• Multiple path and load balancing support
• Automatic failover for management port
• Updating the embedded software without stopping services
• No single point of failure for availability for 99.999% of the time

DSS controller has two expansion card slots that increase the number of ports to connect to. You can choose from three options based on the capabilities of your infrastructure: 4 ports 16Gb Fibre Channel, 4 ports 10GbE iSCSI, and 4 ports 1GbE iSCSI. You can combine Fibre Channel and iSCSI interfaces within the same system. A dual-controller DSS have up to 20 iSCSI 10GbE ports or up to 16 16Gb FC ports. As a result, multiple hosts can be connected to the system without using switches.

By default, XS5200/XS3200 controllers are shipped without add-in cards. They have two iSCSI 10GBase-T ports for connecting hosts, which allows up to 256 hosts to connect. For a two-controller system, the total throughput of standard interfaces reaches 40 Gb/s.

The entire XCubeSAN family supports the interface 12Gb SAS.

XS5226 allows you to install 26 disks in a 2U package.

The XS5200/XS3200 series supports cache-to-flash technology using power modules and M.2. When the system is suddenly powered down, data from the cache will be written to the memory of the M.2 module. Power for this process is provided in two ways: a traditional VVM battery or a capacitor. The capacitor is an unattended module, it is completely independent of temperature parameters. All of these modules are hot swappable and provide zero downtime.

The XS5200/XS3200 series uses a dedicated processor core to handle iSCSI and Fibre Channel traffic.

The disk space is expanded through 2 12Gb mini SAS HD (SFF-8644) ports located on each controller to which the XD5300 shelves are connected. Up to 446 drives are supported. The final performance can reach up to 12,000 MB/s per read and up to 8,000 MB/s per write, more than 1.5 million IOPS for transactional loads.

The XS5200/XS3200 series supports SED drives. The use of such disks will protect against the loss or theft of the disks themselves. Working with them does not reduce the overall performance of the system, and the data located on them can be deleted faster than with traditional software. Any unauthorized intrusion will render unreadable the data on the SED disks.

The XS5200/XS3200 series integrates with virtualization systems. It is certified to work with VMware vSphere and supports the VAAI mechanism. It is compatible with ODX-enabled Windows Server 2012 R2.

XCubeSAN XS3226

On February 27, 2017, the company Qsan introduced the DSS XS3226 model. The system uses 26 2.5 "SFF drives in a 2U chassis.

Qsan XS3226, according to the creators, is an option for organizing productive solutions on the SFF storage platform, including All-flash arrays, by supporting technologies:

• SAS 12G,
• SSD caching,
• Auto Tiering,
• snapshots,
• replication.

Qsan XS3226, (2016)

The technology is scalable through expansion shelves of different form factors (2U-4U 12-60 drives) and sufficient reliability by duplicating components, avoiding a single point of failure.

2016: XCubeSAN XS5200 и XD5300

In May 2016, Qsan Technology announced the presentation of the DSS XCubeSAN XS5200 and XCubeDAS XD5300 series. The XCubeSAN series is the next generation SAN platform with the latest Intel Xeon D-1500 processors and the QLogic 2600 (16Gb) Fibre Channel 4-port fifth-generation controller.

The XCubeDAS series is the next generation of Direct-Attached Storage (DAS) modules that support 12G SAS 3.0 technology. Qsan's XCubeDAS can be used to scale XCubeSAN XS5200 series systems and connect directly to servers.

As noted, Qsan has partnered with Intel and QLogic to create a next-generation storage platform to deliver high-quality storage. With advanced silicon technologies from Intel and QLogic, the XCubSAN XS5200 series can deliver up to 12,000 performance. MB/s when reading and up to 8 thousand MB/s when writing, as well as more than 1.5 million IOPS. The systems are suitable for applications demanding I/O performance, media and entertainment platforms, large-scale video surveillance projects, high-performance clusters and virtualization systems.

center customers are looking for DSS to increase storage density and integrate with the entire infrastructure. The Intel Xeon processor D-1500 family allows storage providers such as Qsan to give their customers this important functionality, provide increased efficiency and return on investment, "said Andrea Nelson, Marketing Director of DSS at Intel Data Center Group

Gen 5 Fibre Channel technology is specifically designed for the growing bandwidth requirements of data centers," said Vikram Karvat, QLogic's vice president of product, marketing and planning. "The innovative QLogic multi-port isolation architecture provides the maximum number of IOPSs and reduces latency, which is essential for mission-critical applications, scaling performance, and ensuring the required level of reliability."

The XCubeSAN and XCubeDAS series are presented in 4U form factors (accommodating 24 drives), 3U (accommodating 16 drives), 2U (accommodating 12 drives) and 2U (accommodating 26 2.5-inch drives). The state-of-the-art Intel Xeon Broadwell-DE processor, DDR4 ECC memory, 12Gb SAS 3.0 technology, and 2-port card deliver high performance and compliance for all major enterprise applications. XCubeSAN supports auto tiering and SSD caching, which reduces total cost of ownership, Qsan said.

According to the company, the XS5200 will have support for SED disks, protection against DDoS attacks via iSCSI, cache protection using a capacitor and support for a M.2 module for battery-free cache protection.