HighPoint has lifted the covers off a new line of external NVMe RAID enclosures, designed to elevate Gen4 storage applications to “new heights”, it says.
The RocketStor 654x series promises x16 transfer performance and “nearly half a petabyte” of storage capacity, which can be integrated into any x86 platform with a free PCIe x16 slot.
The enclosures are aimed at industrial and edge computing platforms, and professional workstation environments. They are designed to support applications that must rapidly access, transfer and process large volumes of data, such as AI training, media and entertainment post production, as well as medical imaging or diagnostic platforms.
Available with four or eight hot-swappable, vertically aligned 2.5-inch drive bays, and powered by the supplier’s PCI switching architecture and RAID technology, the enclosures can deliver up to 28GB/s of transfer bandwidth. They also support up to eight DC and Enterprise class U.2 and U.3 media, configured into as many as four independent RAID 0, 1 or 10 arrays.
The ability to fully optimize x16 lanes of Gen4 upstream or direct CPU bus bandwidth, combined with self-bifurcation (managing and distributing x48 lanes of internal host bandwidth), is a “major game-changer” claimed HighPoint.
“This advanced architecture enables each RocketStor 654x enclosure to reach its full performance and capacity potential, while allowing for a remarkably compact 4.84 inch chassis,” it said.
Each system provides x16 lanes of dedicated PCIe Gen4 upstream bandwidth, and x4 lanes of dedicated downstream bandwidth to each U.2 or U.3 SSD. The architecture is also designed to minimize latency and “significantly enhances” signal integrity to streamline I/O transmission between the host computer and NVMe storage, we’re told.
The external RocketStor 654x enclosures are equipped with low-decibel cooling fans, and full manual fan-control enables administrators to adjust the cooling system based on ambient conditions, including an option to disable the fan for workflows that demand complete silence. HighPoint says the external form factor enables admins to easily expand or upgrade storage capacity for any PC platform with PCIe Gen4 x16 connectivity.
The NVMe RAID enclosures will begin shipping next month, and will be available worldwide direct from the supplier online or through approved distributors and resellers.
The RocketStor 6542AW 8-Bay PCIe 4.0 x16 External NVMe RAID Enclosure has a list price of $2,299. The price for the RocketStor 6541AW 4-Bay PCIe 4.0 External NVMe RAID Enclosure is yet to be confirmed.
