GreenBytes Cypress aims to offer unlimited scalability in a small footprint

GreenBytes features capabilities not often included as standard in other NAS products

Developments of the week in storage

A very cool company - GreenBytes - debuted last week introducing its Cypress storage system, a network-attached storage system that uses Sun's ZFS+ file system and Sun Fire X4540 Thumper storage boxes.

Cypress is a NAS system intended for archiving persistent unstructured data, such as files, images, etc. By basing its product on the ZFS+ file system, Cypress incorporates de-duplication, block-level compression and power management. Cypress is available in a 4U high enclosure for a raw capacity of 11.7TB per rack unit (U).

In addition Cypress uses MAID (Massive Array of Idle Disks) technology to reduce power consumption. It supports the Unix/Linux Network File System (NFS) and the Windows Common Internet File System (CIFS), as well as the iSCSI block-level storage protocol.

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A very cool company - GreenBytes - debuted last week introducing its Cypress storage system, a network-attached storage system that uses Sun's ZFS+ file system and Sun Fire X4540 Thumper storage boxes.

Cypress is a NAS system intended for archiving persistent unstructured data, such as files, images, etc. By basing its product on the ZFS+ file system, Cypress incorporates de-duplication, block-level compression and power management. Cypress is available in a 4U high enclosure for a raw capacity of 11.7TB per rack unit (U).

In addition Cypress uses MAID (Massive Array of Idle Disks) technology to reduce power consumption. It supports the Unix/Linux Network File System (NFS) and the Windows Common Internet File System (CIFS), as well as the iSCSI block-level storage protocol.

Cypress also features remote replication capability, which automates the replication of user’s file system data to network-attached Cypress filers. Cypress also includes snapshotting and shadow copy capabilities.

In introducing Cypress, GreenBytes has announced a system that allows unlimited scalability in a small footprint with optimum power utilization. The inclusion of such technologies as MAID, de-duplication, replication and compression are often not included as standard features in competing products.

In a Cypress system, drives are organized as RAID-6 virtual devices and each share or LUN (Logical Unit Number) is represented as a unique file system. Storage for all file systems are virtualized into a single pool. (Compare Storage Virtualization products)

GreenBytes Cypress is priced at $1 per effective gigabyte.

Read more about data center in Network World's Data Center section.

Deni Connor is principal analyst for Storage Strategies NOW and host of both the Masters of Storage and Masters of Servers Solution Centers.