Shulou(Shulou.com)05/31 Report--

Qsan, a storage specialist known for providing affordable SAN solutions, is now playing a major role in the all-flash array (AFA) market for SMBs. The Xcefasxf 2026d is its first dedicated AFA product offering an impressive range of features and performance at a low price point that will be very attractive to SMEs.

The chassis supports up to 26 SFF drives, two more than many competitors '2U arrays. In addition to dual hot-swappable PSUs and fans, the chassis includes dual controllers that operate in active/active mode, providing fully transparent failover.

This isn't Qsan's first Qsan; it uses almost the same hardware package as the XCubeSAN XS 3226D, which launched two years ago. The XF 2026D features the XEVO operating system and HTML5 network interface, which Qsan has built specifically for AFA applications.

Evaluation of qsxcube fasxf2026d: controller structure

These controllers are quad-core Xeon D-1500 processors with 32GB of DDR4 cache, which can be upgraded to 64GB. Since the small expansion slots above each PSU have cache modules on one side and battery backup modules on the other side, cache protection can be well covered.

In addition to dual 10GBase-T iSCSI data ports, each controller can accept two expansion cards, including four-port 16Gb/s Fibre Channel and 10GbE SFP and dual-port 16Gb/s Fibre Channel and 10GbE copper options. Note that the second expansion slot on each controller has a maximum bandwidth of 20 Gbit/s, so performance may be limited if a four-port card is installed.

The expansion potential looks good, and the controller also features dual embedded mini SAS ports at 12gb/s. With Qsan's 26-bay XD5326D disk shelf, you can daisy chain four of these ports to dual redundant links and support up to 130 SSDs.

Qsanxiube fasxf2026d evaluation: qsanxievo.

Rapid lab deployment. Qsan's QFinder app found the array and provided direct access to the XEVO network interface. Even a quick glance at XEVO is impressive because its interface is completely different from Qsan's standard SANOS 4 software, and we dare say the design is better.

The console opens an informational status screen showing SSD installed, storage usage, array overview, pools, volumes, and hosts, and bold real-time graphs of total latency, IOPS, and throughput. We used 8 Seagate Nytro SAS3 SSDs and transferred them to the storage page of the interface. We quickly created two four-drive RAID10 storage pools and asked the wizard to create a volume in each pool.

For performance testing, we used two Xeon Scalable servers running Windows Server 2016 and installed ATTO Cyrus four-port 16Gb/s Fibre Channel HBA on each server. Host mapping is easy, all HBA WWNs are automatically discovered when connected to the array, which allows us to quickly map each server to a private volume.

One notable feature is that the controller operates in synchronous mode rather than the more common ALUA(asymmetric logic unit access). Most importantly, you can connect hosts across two controllers for redundancy, but unlike ALUA, all MPIO links are optimized and none are on standby.

Evaluation of qsxcube fasxf2026d: FC performance.

Our servers are connected to the Slot 1 module via a four-port 64Gbits second Fibre Channel MPIO link, and we can see that the XF2026D delivers impressive performance. To get a baseline, we ran Iometer on the server, which reported sequential read and write rates of 49 Gbps and 37.2 Gbps, and random operations of 49.1 Gbps and 47.3 Gbps.

For random operations, changing to 4KB blocks returns 370,000 and 215,000 IOPS(for sequential reads and writes), down to 364,000 and 150,000 IOPS. Both servers are running Iometer, and we recorded cumulative sequential read and write operations of 97.6 Gbit/s and 70.3 Gbit/s, respectively, and random operations returned 97.7 Gbit/s and 53.2 Gbit/s, respectively.

Iometer reports that the cumulative total throughput for sequential reads and writes was 691,500 and 429,500 IOPS, which is excellent, while when switching to random operation, these results were 686, 700 and 301,000 IOPS, respectively. Latency rates are very low because we see that all IOPS tests recorded by Iometer are less than 0.5 milliseconds.

The only number we can't report is the CPU utilization of the controller because the XEVO console doesn't display this option. Also, slot 2 does introduce bandwidth limitations because Fibre Channel modules are switched in slot 1 and the throughput test will be rerun on the server and you can see about 220,000 IOPS for sequential reads.

Evaluation of Qsxcube fasxf2026d: data protection and SSD monitoring.

XEVO's protection groups simplify data protection because you can place multiple volumes in them and apply a set of schedules to control snapshots, remote replication to an external array, and local replication to another storage pool. Snapshots can be run every 15 minutes on selected days.

Clock, replication tasks can apply one of eight traffic shaping groups, enforcing bandwidth limits during peak and off-peak hours.

system.

Data recovery is just as fast; simply load the snapshot hub by clicking on the gear icon next to the volumes in the protection group. This loads a list of snapshots to which you can apply the snapshots to restore or expose them as new LUNs for manual file and folder restore.

Another smart feature of XEVO is QSLife. Accessed from the same console, this provides accurate data on the remaining life of each SSD, shows a usage graph for each SSD, and features three alert levels so you're never caught when an SSD reaches its working life.

Qsan XCubeFAS XF2026D Comments: Judgement

During testing, we found that the XCubeFAS XF 2026D was able to deliver the highest speeds and IOPS over FC, although the lower bandwidth of the controller's second expansion slot could impact overall performance. Nevertheless, it offers impressive storage capabilities at a low price, XEVO OS is great for use, and its active/active architecture and 6 - 9s reliability make this AFA a great choice for hosted mission-critical storage.

product specifications

Chassis: 2U rack

Storage: 26 x SAS3 SFF Hot Swap Drive Bay

Power supply: 2 x 770W hot plug PSU

Cooling: 2 hot plug fan modules

Other: Cache to flash and battery backup modules

Two hot plug controllers, each with the following:

CPU: quad-core Intel Xeon D-1500

Memory: 32GB DDR4 cache (up to 64GB)

Array support: RAID0,1,0 + 1, 3, 5, 6, 10, 30, 50, 60, N mirror

Ports: Gigabit management, 2 x 10GBase-T data ports

Expansion: 2 host card slots, 2 12Gbps mini-SAS (SFF-8644)

Administration: Web browser

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