Quanta QCT recently unveiled three new storage server platforms. The QuantaGrid D51PH-1ULH is a 1U server meant for hybrid arrays, the QuantaPlex T21P-4U is meant for high-density hard drive deployments, and the QuantaPlex T21P-4U is a storage cluster-in-a-box solution for high-availability. Each system is built for a specific storage scenario.
QuantaGrid D51PH-1ULH
The QuantaGrid D51PH-1ULH is a 1U hybrid, scale-out, high computing storage server designed for software defined storage (SDS) applications. It combines an Intel Xeon E5 V3 processor platform with 12 hard drives and 4 solid state drives. This gives the server the capability to have both hard drives for longer term bulk storage and smaller SSDs for a cache tier.
For applications such as Ceph and Linux/ Solaris/ FreeBSD based ZFS solutions, this is an excellent set of capabilities allowing for hard drive, NAND and RAM storage. For example one could have a 12 disk RAID-Z2 array with two ZIL drives and two L2ARC drives in a ZFS deployment with the QuantaGrid D51PH-1ULH. In most general purpose servers, that would be impossible without using 2.5″ disks in 3.5″ drive sleds. The QuantaGrid D51PH-1ULH also can add OCP mezzanine cards for high performance networking. In SDS setups such as Ceph, it is best practice to have a separate high speed Ceph communication backbone.
QuantaPlex T21P-4U
Fitting 78 drives in a 4U form factor, the QuantaPlex T21P-4U is a high density, high computing storage server. It is also powered by the Intel Xeon E5 V3 processor family giving it Intel’s latest compute inside. 78 drives in a 4U chassis is one of the more dense solutions out there.
For example, a standard 4U chassis may fit 24 front facing bays and a typical double-sided storage array will fit 36 drives. Solutions such as the Backblaze storage pod “only” fit 45 hard drives in a custom 4U chassis. 78 drives represents an opportunity to consolidate older generations of storage servers into 1/2 to 1/3 the footprint. The QuantaPlex T21P-4U also features screw-less HDD carriers to decrease servicing times. With a 4% AFR and 78 drives, ease of maintenance is a consideration. It also provides visible disk status indicators that enable service engineers to assess disk status without opening the top cover. Unlike some of the lower performance solutions like the Backblaze pod, the QuantaPlex T21P-4U also features OCP LAN mezzanine card support for higher speed networking. In support of green features, the QuantaPlex T21P-4U can individually power on and off disks to lower energy consumption.
QuantaPlex T21SR-2U
The QuantaPlex T21SR-2U is a 2U two-node cluster-in-a-box server also based on the Intel Xeon processor E5 v3 family designed for up time and data integrity.
Inside the box there are two server nodes clustered via a PCIe interconnection or 10Gb. The nodes share up to 24 disk drives. The serve node interconnects via a special mid-plane allow for high-availability architectures in the box. If one server board fails, the other server board takes control and gains full access to HDD and front end host I/O. That keeps the storage cluster up even if one node goes down.
The QuantaPlex T21SR-2U also uses a backup battery unit (BBU) to provide up to 120 seconds of power for each node after a power failure.
