Sun Storage F5100 officially announced

Sun has now announced the F5100 officially. The specs are really impressive: The largest version with 80 FMods yields 1.6 Million read IOPS and 1.2 million write IOPS with 4k blocks. 12.8 GB/sec read and 9.7 GB/sec write. 1,920 GB capacity. It uses 386 watts while active. More specs are available at the Sun specs page for the Sun Storage F5100 Flash Array. Furthermore the documentation of this devices should reappear soon at docs.sun.com. Until that moment you will find some additional information about the device at Sun’s website. This device isn’t that expensive as you may think. The device starts at $45,995 (with 20 Flash Modules giving you 480 GB, 397 K IOPS read and 304 K IOPS write). When you look in such a device you will see 80 densly packed FMods.

In the back of the device you will find the SAS connectors for the device. There are four domains with 4 SAS connectors each. For a maximum performance configuration you configure 5 FMods and a SAS connector into a zone.

Most important: The FMods doesn’t have a battery on each module to protect the caches. This is done centrally by super capacitors in so called Energy Storage Modules. You plug them into the front of these devices.

Just a warning: Those ESM are quite potent super caps. Read the manual with care before handling those modules. You need a lot of power to protect all the caches and those ESM are capable to deliver this power.