The RamSan-440, TMS' thirteenth generation solid state disk, is simply the most advanced SSD on the market today. Its fast DDR RAM storage is ideal for storing performance-demanding data and accelerating application performance. In fact, the RamSan-440 is The World's Fastest Storage�. No RAID, no cache, or other solid state disk is capable of the raw performance offered by the RamSan-440.

The RamSan-440 raises the bar for shutdown and restore as well. It is the first SSD unit to use Flash memory as the backup media. This dramatically decreases the amount of time it takes to back up the data in the event of power loss. It also dramatically increases the recovery and start up times.

RamSan-440 highlights:

• 4.5 Gigabytes per Second
• 600,000 IOPS
• Up to 512 GB Storage
• 350-SEC Restore/Backup
• Fibre Channel or Infiniband

Installation and Management

TMS� numerous customers have seen real world increases from 2x to 25x simply by installing a single RamSan. The RamSan440 can accelerate numerous applications across industries. It is best known for drastic performance gains in OLTP, batch processing, and other intensive operations. The RamSan plugs into servers or fabrics through basic Fibre Channel. It appears simply as a very, very fast disk to the network, able to act as any disk or storage system might.

Highly Reliable Storage

There is no tradeoff in reliability for performance. The RamSan 440 includes RAIDed RAM boards for primary storage, hot swappable power supplies, and three independent internal batteries (N+1) to ensure that no power loss or power supply failure will stop the RamSan from performing its internal backup procedures to RAID protected Flash memory modules. Redundant cooling fans and redundant data ports are also part of the sophisticated design.

The RamSan-440 protects both the primary storage (RAM) and the backup storage media (Flash) by using RAIDed configurations. The RamSan 440 protects the primary RAM storage media with RAIDed RAM-boards. As part of the RAID protection for each bank of memory there is one set of memory cards that store parity data.

The RamSan 440 protects the Flash storage media with RAIDed Flash memory modules. If a Flash memory module fails, a parity module will provide data protection. The Flash memory modules are used when the RamSan loses power; the data residing on the RAM is transferred to the Flash memory so that data is not lost. By using RAIDed Flash memory modules, the data is protected from a Flash module failure during a power loss.
The RamSan 440 takes reliability even further by implementing IBM Chipkill technology. Standard error correcting code (ECC) implementations correct single-bit data errors in memory chips but cannot correct the multi-bit errors that can result in data integrity issues. Chipkill technology allows a memory system to correct a multi-bit failure up to and including a total chip failure. Combining Chipkill and RAIDed memory boards brings unprecedented memory protection for a SSD. The RamSan 440 has 648GBs of raw memory capacity that is presented as 512 GBs of usable capacity after these protection levels. All solid state disks can correct a single bit error before sending data to the server as a part of their ECC protection.

Soft Error Scrubbing

The RamSan 440, however, goes a step further by scrubbing; re-writing the corrected data to memory and then verifying the re-write to determine if a memory chip has a failure (a hard error) or if radiation transients caused the single bit error (a soft error). Systems that do not scrub single bit memory errors will either a) report errors to a system log that will eventually encourage replacement of a memory board or b) hide these errors, thus leaving a potentially unsafe memory board in the system. Research on this topic suggests that 90% of single bit errors are soft errors. In these cases, the RamSan-440 will correct the error through the scrubbing process and prevent unnecessary downtime to replace the memory board.

Interoperability

The RamSan-440 is designed to look like a disk to the network. Therefore, it is highly interoperable and works in virtually any enterprise environment. It is installed in numerous environments, including Apple OS X, AIX, Solaris, Linux, and Windows. Hardware from Fibre Channel and InfiniBand vendors including Cisco, Emulex, Brocade, McData, Mellanox, QLogic, LSI Logic, and ATTO easily interoperates with the RamSan

Active Backup and Chipkill Technology:

The Newest Innovations in SSD  Exclusive to the RamSan is Active Backup� software. Other SSDs and cache system can only "destage" data from RAM to backup disks once power is already lost. This means that data is never backed up during normal operation and the time-to-complete-backup after power loss is unacceptably long. A RamSan-300 with Active Backup can continuously backup data on RAM to the internal backup hard disks without impacting performance. This means in an emergency situation, data is anywhere from 60-100% on the backup hard drives already.

Specifications