Data Backup Digest

Originally founded in 2000, Netlist quickly gained steam in the world of high-performance modular memory subsystems. Within their relatively short lifespan, Netlist has already gained acclaim as the leading provider of such subsystems in the world. As such, they are making great strides in overcoming technical limitations regarding costs, performance and even density.

In fact, Netlist has brought many of their own ideas to the industry. Recognized for pioneering several brand new technologies, including the doubling of densities within quad-rank DDR chips and implementing passives onto printed circuit boards in order to bolster space utilization, the team with Netlist is certainly no stranger to the area of RAM.

This is why it should come as no surprise that their latest announcement centers on a PCIe card that combines the high speeds of DRAM with the consistency and integrity of NAND flash memory. Meant specifically for servers and storage arrays, the device is capable of archiving 16 GB of data in less than 100 seconds. As such, the EXPRESSVault EV3 makes an ideal solution for backing up data that currently resides in a system’s memory.

Christopher Lopes, vice president of worldwide sales with Netlist, explained some of the benefits of his company’s line of EXPRESSvault EV3 RAM chips. He was quoted as saying: “We are proud to debut this new EXPRESSvault EV3 family which provides plug-and-play PCIe connectivity and builds upon our position as an innovator in the NVRAM marketplace. We are delivering a superior solution that meets the high performance and endurance demands of enterprise storage and data center applications for the cloud. EXPRESSvault EV3 architecture ensures data in memory is immediately and reliably backed up without the use of expensive, inefficient UPS or battery technologies. Because this solution is independent of the memory bus technology and works in both DDR3 and DDR4 based hardware, it is easy to integrate and take to production.”

There are currently three different versions of the EXPRESSvault EV3 PCIe Data Protection Card, with each one providing a different capacity for storage: 4, 8 and 16 GB capacities are available. The other features of the cards are primarily the same, including a bandwidth rating of 6.5 GB per second and random read / write speeds of up to 250,000 operations per second while using 4 KB test files.

Apart from safeguarding enterprise data from sudden loss or disaster, the EXPRESSvault EV3 also strengthens a system’s data caching protocol. This causes other services, including web-scale apps, in-memory databases and online transaction processing, to function faster than ever before.

When the card is not in use, it relies on an internal supercapacitor to maintain its data. According to Netlist, the capacitor within the 8 GB version can be recharged in less than three minutes once power has been restored. As such, the EXPRESSvault EV3 is able to function without the use of uninterruptable power supplies or battery backup systems.

When initially announced, the EXPRESSvault EV3 was displayed on a Dell R630 server. It is also compatible with the 32-bit and 64-bit versions of Red Hat Linux, Ubuntu and CentOS.