Exablox OneBlox Scale-out NAS – an overview

Exablox presented their object-based scale-out NAS solution on Day-3 of the Storage Field Day 7 event by Tech Field Day. Exablox is a scale-out NAS solution provider in the market from early 2013. Solutions from Exablox got some advanced features compared to the conventional NAS solutions.

Let’s read more about the solution and some attractions from them.

OneBlox Appliances : OneBlox currently have OneBlox 4312 and 3308 appliances available in the market. Customer is given the freedom to use their own disks in these appliances (Disks can be of different type and sizes). Exablox is not supplying hard disks with their appliances. 4312 supports 12 hard disks (with a maximum capacity of 96TB/appliance supported) and 3308 can have 8 hard disks.

OneBlox appliances form a ring architecture as more appliances are added to the system. These appliances will have a global filesystem running across them. Addition of new appliances to the ring is online and transparent to end users. A single OneBlox ring can scale upto nearly 700TBs.

From Exablox R&D Lab

Object-based : OneBlox have an Object-based storage approach, file-based front-end and object-based at back-end. Data from the end users – either SMB or NFS – are mapped to objects by the OneBlox system and stored. Object-based approach adds up flexibility and have a lot of other advantages including their cloud-based management system, CDP snapshots etc…

OneBlox have a future-oriented cloud-based management system, called OneSystem. Management is intended to be completely via cloud. The small LCD panel in front of the appliance is used for the initial setup of the appliance. OneBlox user data firewall ensures the data is not shared with the cloud.

My take : The BYOD (Bring Your-Own Drive) is a big advantage for the customers as they can use (can mix and match also) their own hard disks. I became a fan of the hardware design with lower power consumption and reduced noise. Many of the customers are still hesitant in getting into the cloud, but cloud-based management from OneBlox will be widely accepted as more industries accept the requirement of cloud-based solutions. With the advantages of Object-based storage solution in addition to the scale-out nature, there’s enough scope for Exablox OneBlox in today’s storage market.

Additional links :

Additional reading and more links here

Solution overview from Exablox website here

Here you can find more posts from me on SFD7.

Disclaimer: My travel and accommodation expenses for the SFD7 (Storage Field Day 7) event were paid by the Tech Field Day team. I am not requested to post about event content and I am not getting paid for any posts or for the time I spend during the event.