Last week Nimbus Data reached out to me to update me on what they are working on, and more explicitly what they are releasing today. Today Nimbus announces HALO 2013 (their storage operating system). Those who are not familiar with Nimbus Data my colleagues Cormac Hogan wrote a great article about what they offer last year, make sure to read it. In short though:
Nimbus Data offers a flash array which is called Gemini. The array offers support for Fibre Channel, Infiniband, iSCSI and NFS. Of course data services like deduplication and replication are supported and they are all about extreme amounts of IOps, low latency and high throughput. Gemini also supports VMware VAAI.
With the 2013 release of HALO I believe Nimbus is getting ready to enter the world of Software Defined Storage. The 2013 release of HALO offers an Analytics module. This analytics module can provide real-time and historical data, and serve up over 200 metrics. This includes things like storage utilization and efficiency, but also statistics on various different levels like host level / port level etc.
Why I said “is getting ready to enter the world of Software Defined Storage” is because Nimbus Data also developed and published a REST based API. This API will allow for full administration of the platform and allow you to integrate with existing solutions in your stack. For instance all statistics are exposed via the API, I guess that means that plugins for all relevant monitoring solutions would be a logical next step, personally I think having a VC Ops adapter would be nice. Another thing which is added with the 2013 release is a mobile management platform, although I am not sure how many people would expose that to the outside… it is nice to have at least the ability to do so if you want. The mobile solution offers you utilization and performance charts, but also allows you to monitor system events.
I guess that this REST API also means that it shouldn’t take too long before VMware Site Recovery Manager support is added for Nimbus Data. This in my opinion is one of the few gaps they will still need to address, but I am guessing that is a matter of time. Also, Gemini is as of writing not on the VMware HCL however Nimbus has indicated that they are going through the motion and they should be listed within a reasonable amount of time. (At least that is what I was told, make sure to check the HCL if you are looking to buy a new array) Nevertheless, a nice update from Nimbus Data which will make your life as an administrator easier.