Pivot3 PCIe Hybrid Arrays
Ensure Flash Performance Aligns with Business Priorities

PCIe Flash:

Manage performance of applications without the burden of complex overhead

PCIe-flash integration means flash is closest to RAM and CPU on each storage processor for lowest latency performance. Our innovative multi-tier architecture is designed to encompass RAM, PCIe-flash, SSDs and HDDs storage tiers, as well as future media types, all managed by Storage QoS to deliver on your application SLAs.

Dynamic Quality of Service:

Pivot3’s Dynamic QoS allows business to meet application SLAs with easy to manage policies that provision performance, prioritize workloads, and manage data placement and protection. With the ability to automate and schedule granular QoS settings, from a LUN/datastore level down to an individual VM/VMDK, Dynamic QoS significantly reduces the time it takes to manage performance and data protection.

Policy-based Prioritization for Application Performance and Data Protection

Businesses are looking to reduce CAPEX and OPEX by consolidating their server and storage infrastructure and running more applications on them. Flash arrays and hyperconverged infrastructure are rapidly becoming the solutions of choice as customers modernize their data centers. However, many are disappointed when they encounter inconsistent performance caused by resource contention, software overhead, controller bottlenecks, and other system constraints. Most Quality of Service (QoS) features are not designed to address these issues, because they only set caps on performance, and are unable to prioritize I/O or data protection operations. Watch the video below to learn more about the benefits of Pivot3’s Dynamic QoS and HCI.

Dynamic QoS Capabilities all work together in real-time to achieve SLAs

Pivot3’s Dynamic QoS allows business to meet application SLAs with easy to manage policies that provision performance, prioritize workloads, and manage data placement and protection. With the ability to automate and schedule granular QoS settings, from a LUN/datastore level down to an individual VM/VMDK, Dynamic QoS significantly reduces the time it takes to manage performance and data protection.

What Makes Pivot3 QoS Dynamic?

Policy
Each business workload is unique, which is why Pivot3 allows customers to assign an appropriate performance level to each one. QoS performance policies define performance targets for each workload that manage minimum IOPS and throughput, and maximum latency. QoS policies are assigned when a volume is created and can be changed on-the-fly as business needs require. By automating policy changes, QoS scheduling give IT the agility to support the business as application priorities and workloads change.

Priority
Each QoS policy has a corresponding Service Level that automatically governs how each one is prioritized when the system is under load. There are three service levels built into the QoS engine: Mission-Critical, Business-Critical, and Non-Critical, and each is pre-assigned to QoS policy. They instruct the system on how important it is to maintain each QoS policy's targets. For example, if there's resource contention, QoS policy 1 (Mission-critical) will be maintained by prioritizing its I/O requests over Non-Critical workloads first, and Business-Critical workloads, if necessary.

Placement
Dynamic QoS manages where data is stored in real-time (RAM, PCIe flash, SSD or HDD) to ensure performance Service Levels are met. The caching and tiering algorithms of the system are directly tied to the QoS policies and priorities in order to ensure that the right data is placed in the appropriate storage medium to deliver on the specified performance targets. The data is moved between tiers in real-time as workloads change, ensuring predictable performance and the most efficient use of system resources.

Protection
Data protection QoS provides policy-based management and automation of snapshots, replication and retention to best align with data protection needs. Policies can be applied to volumes or groups of volumes, and can be scheduled, allowing customers to set pre-defined schedules for both performance and data protection policies that can change automatically at pre-determined times. A queuing mechanism ensures that mission-critical jobs go to front of the queue to be executed first, business critical jobs next, and finally, non-critical jobs.

Specifications:

One Multi-tier Platform, One Storage QoS, Two Options

Inclusive Features

• Dynamic QoS
• Service levels
• Dynamic data path
• Prioritized active cache
• Data reduction
• Data protection (snapshot and replication)
• Application integration

	N5-1500	N5-6000	N5-200	N5-300	N5-500	N5-1000
	All-Flash Arrays		Hybrid Arrays
Node Performance Rating	450,000 IOPS* 6.0 GB/s**	450,000 IOPS* 6.0 GB/s**	150,000 IOPS* 2.0 GB/s**	200,000 IOPS* 2.4 GB/s**	225,000 IOPS* 2.7 GB/s**	250,000 IOPS* 3.0 GB/s**
RAM	192GB	192GB	96GB	192GB	192GB	192GB
PCIe Flash	2.6TB	2.6TB	2.0TB (7.2TB Max)	2.6TB (7.8TB Max)	5.2TB (10.4TB Max)	10.4TB (15.6TB Max)
SSD Capacity	15TB (60TB Max)	60TB (240TB Max)	32TB (128TB Max)	64TB (448TB Max)	64TB (448TB Max) / 128TB (512TB Max)	64TB (448TB Max) / 128TB (512TB Max)
Network Interfaces	Data: (8) 1/10GbE SFP+ or (8) 1/10GBT RJ45, iSCSI Management: (4) 1GbE RJ45, http, https		Data: (4) 1/10GbE SFP+ or (4) 1/10GBT RJ45, iSCSI Management: (4) 1GbE RJ45, http, https
All-Inclusive Features	Quality of Service Service Levels Dynamic Data Path Prioritized Active Cache Data Reduction Data Protection (Snapshot and Replication)
Hardware Availability	Storage Processors Redundant, Hot Swap Power Supplies Redundant Network Connections RAID, Hot Swap SSD/HDD Drives Redundant Fans
VMware Integration	VAAI VASA vCenter Plug-in MPIO ALUA Virtual Volumes Horizon View Proven Storage
Support	Software/Firmware Updates Hardware Parts Replacement Performance and Capacity Expansion Packs covered by N5 support contract Proactive Phone-Home Monitoring (via Internet) Direct Access to Pivot3 Support Engineers (via Phone and Email)

Scalability Options

Capacity Packs (SSD Shelves)		Capacity Packs (HDD Shelves)
3x 15TB Scale up to 60TB	3x 60TB Scale up to 240TB	3x 32TB Scale up to 128TB	3x 32/64/128TB Scale up to 448TB	3x 32/64/128TB Scale up to 512TB
		Performance Pack Add an additional 5.2TB of PCIe Flash for increased performance

*4K Reads.
**256K Reads.

Documentation:

Download the Pivot3 N5 PCIe Hybrid Array Datasheet (.PDF)