SAN / Storage: Texas Memory RamSan 500

After spending a year using the a RamSan 400 which is a 128 gigabyte solid state DRAM system, I wondered how it could get better.  These things are pretty expensive and the only drawback I found to the 400 is the limited storage.  There’s not much that you can do with 128 gigs of storage!  Granted it served the initial function perfectly.  This was used to house our main production database.

About 4 months ago, we were looking to add another RamSan into our environment after deciding EMCs flash DAEs were not for us (at this time).  I was initially a little weary of flash based storage, but had faith in RamSan.  After reviewing the product literature more and getting some hands on with the unit, those worries are gone.  Our RamSan 500 was purchased with 2 terabytes of Flash storage and the DRAM write cache was expanded to 64 gigabytes.

With the write cache expansion, this new units cache was literally 1/2 the size of the current RamSan 400 DRAM capacity.  With this in place and the high IO that the flash disks can maintain, there has not been any noticeable speed differences between the two units.  The 500 also has an internal battery for power backup.  If power is lost, the battery will keep the unit going long enough to copy the cache’s un-written data to disk.

There are two main features that I love.  First is tha ability to lock a LUN on the 500 series into the cache, so even-though it is mainly a flash storage system, extreme IO can be accomplished.  By locking the lun in cache, the data will reside in RAM and never go to disk unless power is lost.  The second is the ability to centrally manage other RamSans on the network (auto discovered) with a specific license key.  Almost forgot to mention, the unit has quad 4 gigabit fiber connectivity.

Notes:  If you have any questions, please ask!  Again, these units are amazing.


~ by Kevin Goodman on June 4, 2009.

Posted in Hardware, RamSan, SAN (Storage Area Network)
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7 Responses to “SAN / Storage: Texas Memory RamSan 500”

  1. Nice blog and thanks for the great references! Would you be interested in a case study with us, maybe a co-presentation at VOUG?

    Mike Ault said this on June 4, 2009 at 1:15 pm

  2. Thank you for your blogpost. I am very interested in the RAMSAN devices. I would like to use the RAMSAN with VMWare ESX. Do you have experience with the RAMSAN and VMware?

    Ted Steenvoorden said this on October 27, 2009 at 3:18 pm

  3. Ted, I tried to respond to your email and got a bounce back error. If there is another way for me to reach you, please email me kevin@colovirt.com . Thanks!

    Kevin Goodman said this on November 3, 2009 at 3:38 pm

  4. Do you have an experience with the Ramsan 20 pci device.
    I want to install this in a ESXI 4.0 server. Is it compatible ?

    anca said this on April 22, 2010 at 11:44 am

  5. Sorry for the dealy, no I have not had the chance to work with the RamSan 20 devices. From what I understand, the PCI module should show up as a SCSI disk to the operating system. If that is so, it might work. I can get you in contact with the RamSan person that we use if you would like. They should have more information concerning their compatibility with the versions of VMware ESX.

    Kevin Goodman said this on April 26, 2010 at 3:56 pm

  6. We have the same question. ESXi 4 U1 compatablity w/ RamSan 10/20 pci-e device and/or fusion ioDrive pci-e card. We would love to talk w/ a rep and are leaning towards the TMS branded card.

    Scott said this on April 26, 2010 at 7:12 pm

  7. I will have a Texas Memory Systems rep contact you via email. One thing to make sure of is if there is a RAID possibility. I know you can install multiple RamSan 10/20(s) in a server but I figure that RAID would have to be done via software RAID. If that is the case, then you couldnt have data RAIDed with ESXi. Let me know how things go with RamSan.

    Kevin Goodman said this on April 27, 2010 at 12:33 pm

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