Quantum has produced a cheaper NVMe all-flash array by shrinking the F2000.
The new F1000 is a 10-drive array housed in a 1U enclosure with a single controller. That cuts the availability rating compared with Quantum’s F2000, a dual-controller 24-drive array in a 2U cabinet and
The F1000’s sofware is Quantum’s Cloud Storage Platform suite and it is positioned as a lower cost F-Series entry point into Quantum’s StorNext environment for the entertainment and media industry.
The F1000 connectivity options are basically the same as the F2000 – 32Gbit/s Fibre Channel or 100Gbit/s Ethernet for ISER and RDMA. In other words this is a small but extremely fast box for delivering video files to artists, renderers and editors, just like its big F2000 sibling.
Quantum has also changed drive selection for the F1000. There are 1.92, 3.84 and 7.68TB U.2 format drives available for the F2000, but the F1000 gets either the 7.68TB or the 15.36TB.
Quantum says two F1000 capacity points are available; 39TB and 77TB. This raises a question. The 77TB capacity can be made up of 10 x 7.68TB drives or 5 x 15.36TB drives. The 39TB version requires 5 x 7.68TB drives; no combination of 15.36TB drives sums to 39TB. But there is no 10 x 15.36TB capacity point, 154TB, listed by Quantum; does this mean that this configuration is not supported?
Capacity details
A Quantum spokesperson said: “We use 15.36TB and 7.68TB NVMe drives – so the raw capacities of the servers are 153.6TB and 76.8TB respectively. We use RAID 10 protection, which results in useable capacities of 76.8TB and 38.4TB respectively.”
In summary the two configurations are:
- F1000 76.8 TB useable (153.6TB raw, 10 x 15.36TB NVMe drives)
- F1000 38.4 TB useable (76.8TB raw, 10 x 7.68TB NVMe drives)
Will the larger 15.36TB drives be made available for the F2000, doubling its maximum capacity to 368TB?
The spokesperson said: “We are considering this on our roadmap, and will continue to enhance the F-series product line as NVMe drive capacities increases and prices decrease. Of course, we are always looking to balance performance and capacity in a way that makes sense for our customers, so doubling capacity on the F2000 may require some other design changes, to add more network connectivity, more CPU cores and/or more memory – for example.”
Pricing
Regard pricing Quantum said: “The 38TB F1000 server with 100GbitE connectivity has a list price of $82,000. Customers will typically pay something less than list price.
“The F2000 is designed for HA, with dual-ported NVMe drives, two active-active controllers, etc. We expect that F2000 will be quoted and sold at a premium of 30 to 50 per cent over the F1000, depending on capacity points that are being quoted. Our early learnings indicate that for customers that need only 38TB of NVMe, the F1000 is probably the best fit. For customers that need 77TB or more of NVMe, we’ll position both products, with the F2000 at a premium to the F1000.
“The 38TB F1000 server with Ethernet starts at 70,992 Euro on our EMEA price book. “
