Shrink Wrapped BonFire Lite
Shrink wrapped BonFire Lite SAN software
is a low cost solution for those who want to build extremely
low cost ready-to-go all-Flash storage devices, with or
without SSDs. Bonfire Lite is available
in three fixed sizes: 3 terabyte, 6TB, and 12TB. In
addition, a free SOHO version of BonFire Lite is also
available.
BonFire
Lite
Manufacturer's Suggested Retail Prices |
Product Option |
Per
System |
BonFire Lite SAN with 1TB of ESS addressable storage |
free |
BonFire Lite SAN with 3TB of ESS addressable storage |
900 |
BonFire Lite SAN with 6TB of ESS addressable storage |
1,200 |
BonFire Lite SAN with 12TB of ESS addressable storage |
1,800 |
BonFire Lite is
extremely fast. BonFire Lite will
typically random write at the composite linear write rate of
the SSDs present. When
used with 8 typical one-terabyte SSDs, BonFire Lite will write at 3.5GB/sec, and will
internally random write 4KB blocks at about 700,000 IOPS.
Random read performance is typically half of the write
performance. Individual iSCSI 10 gigabit network cards
typically deliver 75,000 to 125,000 random read or write 4KB
IOPS per active port or channel. Accordingly, BonFire
Lite systems are limited by connectivity rather than
internal performance.
Conversely, parity RAID
SAN
solutions typically deliver only 10,000 to 30,000 random
write IOPS: 2%
to 4% of BonFire Lite performance. While mirrored
SSD sets will perform better than parity RAID, write
performance for mirrored sets is typically an order of
magnituge less than BonFire Lite.
BonFire Lite
reduces manufacturing cost because of durability.
WildFire's patented Flash linearization technology typically
increases useful SSD life by more than an order of
magnitude. BonFire's life-extension lets you build with less expensive "consumer" SSD media
while retaining or exceeding the durability of "enterprise"
media.
The ability to use high speed Parity storage similarly
reduces the number of SSDs needed.
BonFire
Lite typical construction costs |
Product Option |
3TB |
6TB |
12TB |
Basic chassis: case with 8 hot swap bays, CPU, RAM,
SATA connectivity, redundant power suppply, and
10GigE networking. |
1,300 |
1,400 |
1,600 |
8 consumer grade SSDs, variously 512GB, 1TB, and 2TB |
400 |
800 |
1,760 |
BonFire Lite-3, -6, and -12 as applicable |
900 |
1,200 |
1,800 |
Total Cost |
2,600 |
3,400 |
5,160 |
Cost per usable terabyte |
866 |
566 |
430 |
Comments: Server costs can be reduced. BonFire
offers software trade discounts to resellers and
OEMs. Chassis costs can be reduced if features
are eliminated or reduced. SSD media prices
continue to decrease. Given the high costs of
building any SAN, including SANs populated
with hard disk drives, solid state storage using
BonFire is rapidly approaching the cost of hard disk
storage.
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The feature set of
BonFire Lite is limited when compared with other BonFire
products. BonFire Lite systems can
be managed and monitored in clusters from a single WebGUi
terminal, and contains all the management tools. BonFire LIte only
supports iSCSI connectivity. It does not support High
Availability, space-expansion compression, deduplication, encryption, or
enhanced FC or RDMA connectivity. All of these
features are available in other variants of BonFire.
Limitations of
free BonFire Lite SOHO. Usable ZFS (hard
disk) space is limited to 4 decimal terabytes. Each customer is limited
to 4 SOHO systems. SOHO systems are not
resaleable. The SOHO system will likely write
more slowly than the larger systems discussed above.
SSDs smaller than half a terabyte frequently linear write
far slower than larger SSDs - often as slow as 100 to 150
megabytes per second.
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