Nexsan
SATABoy
Dense, Fixed Capacity Storage System

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Overview:
- 14-drive SATA RAID system
- 28TB with 2TB drives in 3U
- AutoMAID® level 3 technology saves up to 60% in energy costs
- Includes both FC and iSCSI interfaces
- Combines SAS, SATA and SSD disks in the same system
- Single or dual redundant controllers
- Up to 2GB BBU cache
Nexsan's SATABoy®, a member of the Flexible Storage Platform™, is a storage system ideally positioned for medium-sized businesses and mid-tier deployments in large organizations. With its storage capacity of 28TB in 14 drive bays, SATABoy's small 3U footprint is targeted at primary and secondary storage applications, as well as long-term bulk and backup applications. SATABoy is Nexsan's most compact storage system, where cost-effective high capacity is paramount–yet IT managers don't require the ultra-high density, scalability and capacity offered by Nexsan's larger SATABeast.
By employing SATA drives, SATABoy is much more cost-efficient than storage systems using the typically more expensive SCSI, SAS and fibre-channel drives. Because of this combination of high capacity and cost-effectiveness, SATABoy delivers the industry's best price/performance value in compact disk solution.
As with all Nexsan solutions, SATABoy is built for enterprise-class applications, providing tier-1 full redundancy and high performance at tier-2 prices. It's very easy to install and use. And SATABoy includes technologies that provide a combination of cost-effective high density, space efficiency and Nexsan's AutoMAID® (Massive Array of Idle Disks) level 3 energy-saving technology, which enables SATABoy to save up to 60% in energy costs.

SATABoy Elevated Open
About SATABoy
SATABoy provides organizations with exceptional performance and unparalleled storage flexibility in a compact package to meet real world business objectives. The highly scalable SATABoy features FC and iSCSI connectivity to enable costeffective storage of large amounts of information online, while its high speed performance ensures faster response times for mission critical applications. SATABoy is equally capable of delivering high IOPS for transactional applications and sustaining maximum MB/s throughput for high bandwidth applications such as streaming media.
Energy Saving Benefits
SATABoy offers the energy saving benefits of Nexsan's revolutionary AutoMAID™ technology. AutoMAID™ (Massive Array of Idle Disks) allows SATABoy to place its disk drives into an idle state to conserve energy yet provide near-instantaneous access to data. This powerful combination of high performance with energy saving capabilities enables users to maximize the total return on their storage hardware investment.
Best in Class Performance
SATABoy incorporates advanced features such as dual RAID engines, a high performance cache mirroring ASIC, and active/active failover to deliver uncompromising availability and reliability, feature rich functionality, and high performance. With sustained throughput speeds of up to 540 MB/s per controller, SATABoy provides superior performance across all standard platforms and operating systems. Dual fibre channel and iSCSI or dual SAS and iSCSI connectors on each controller enable easy and flexible implementation into a wide range of environments. SATABoy’s high performance and enormous capacity provides exceptional value that enhances all digital information storage applications, such as live on-line data, streaming media, tiered storage, broadcast/VOD and other business critical applications.
Simple to Use
The advanced hardware design of SATABoy is supported by Nexsan’s simple yet sophisticated Extreme Intelligence software, NexScan, providing intuitive centralized management and monitoring. SATABoy’s integrated NexScan management tool is platform independent with an intuitive design that ensures complete control over configuration and optimization of your storage environment.
Configuration and Management
NexScan is our embedded web-enabled Graphical User Interface (GUI). The platform independence of the SATABoy allows you to access your system from any standard Internet browser or from any host computer either directly connected or via a LAN or WAN with no software or patches required.
- Real-time event, hardware and thermal monitoring dynamically presented.
- Performance statistics monitoring; event logging, rebuild and verify utilities.
Features & Benefits:
| Features | Benefits |
|---|---|
| 14 Drive Capacity | Populate with 14 to 42 300/450/600GB SAS drives or combine with 1TB/2TB SATA drives |
| 14 2TB SATA Disks in 3U of Rack for 28TB | Over 25TB SAS in 4U and over 6TB per U delivers exceptional density |
| Hot-pluggable Disk Expansion | Install new disks into empty bays and create a new RAID set for added capacity without any downtime |
| Single or Dual Controllers | Use a single controller or use dual active/active RAID controllers for high availability |
| Multiple HA Access Modes | Features APPA, 4PAA, APAL (also DCNR) connection and controller failover modes with full LUN access security |
| 2 RAID Engines per Controller | Two RAID engines per controller and four engines in a dual controller configuration ensures maximum throughput across all drives. |
| Fully Redundant | All active components (RAID controllers, modules, fans, power supplies and drives) are redundant and individually hot-swappable. |
| Global Disk Spare | Automatically starts rebuilding a RAID set by using a designated spare drive without requiring user intervention |
| Dual FC and iSCSI Support | Dual FC and iSCSI ports and connectivity are a standard feature for flexible system deployment |
| Supports Multiple RAID sets and LUNs | Support diverse servers and applications with multiple RAID sets and multiple volumes per RAID set for a total of 254 LUNs |
| 2GB Battery Backed Cache | Increased performance with up to 2GB cache per controller with 72hr of data retention |
| Mix SATA and SAS Drive Types | Combine SATA and SAS drives in the same storage system to address diverse applications |
| Redundant Power Supplies | Two redundant power supplies with tachometer-monitored blowers are standard to provide maximum power, cooling and high availability |
| No Special Software Needed | Completely OS independent and standards based - no special software drivers required |
| Embedded GUI | Simple management using the embedded browser based web GUI over the 10/100/1000 IP port, supports email alerts and SNMP traps |
| Nexsan Storage Tools | Manage and configure multiple Nexsan RAID storage systems from a single interface |
| AutoMAID - 60% Savings | Reduced energy consumption and costs by 60% through AutoMAID® technology. |
AutoMAID™ Energy Saving Technology:
Nexsan's evolutionary AutoMAID (Automatic Massive Array of Idle Disks) energy saving technology transparently places disk drives into an idle state to vastly reduce power and cooling costs. AutoMAID delivers the cost-effecdtive benefits of MAID 2.0 without the limitations of slow access times and special host software.
AutoMAID is granular to an individual drive or RAID set and offers multiple levels of energy savings. AutoMAID is user selectable enabling users to determine the right level of response time performance to energy savings. AutoMAID is the first MAID 2.0 architecture that supports VTL, full file format D2D and standard high performance RAID implementations.
Key Points
- AutoMAID reduces power and cooling costs
- Nexsan’s AutoMAID delivers the benefits of MAID without the limitations
- Available on Nexsan Assureon, SATABoy, SATABeast, and SATABeast Xi
AutoMAID Defined
- AutoMAID automatically reduces power consumption and heat generation on idle drives
- Trade-off between response times and power savings are user configurable
- AutoMAID behavior happens automatically and transparently to host – no software changes required
- Typical configuration settings:
- Level 1: Heads Unloaded
- 15% to 20% savings
- Sub-second recovery time
- Level 2: Heads
Unloaded, slows to 4000 RPM
- 35% to 45% savings
- 15 second recovery time
- Level 3: Stops spinning
(sleep mode; powered on)
- 60% to 70% savings
- 30 to 45 second recovery time
- Level 1: Heads Unloaded
AutoMAID Safety Features
- In maximum power saving mode, drive spin up is sequenced to reduce power surges
- Drives automatically wake up for periodic surface scan to ensure data integrity (user configurable)
- AutoMAID has no impact on performance if left on in data-intensive server applications
- Only two simple configuration settings – "timeout" and "power savings desired"
Technical Specifications:
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| SATABoy Specifications | |
|---|---|
| Disk Bays | 14 |
| Rack U | 3U |
| Controllers | One Standard, Dual Optional |
| Dual Optional Controllers | Active/Active fault-tolerance and increased performance with optional second controller |
| Supports E60X Expansion | No |
| Battery Protected Cache per Controller | 1GB or 2GB |
| Host Ports | 2 FC 4Gbit and 2 iSCSI 1Gbit Ports per Controller |
| Storage Expansion Ports for NXS-E60X | N/A |
| Sustained Data Rates (with Dual Controllers) | 1100+ MB/s Reads |
| Hardware RAID 6 | Included |
| RAID Levels | 0, 1, 1+0, 4, 5, 6 |
| Volumes and LUNs | 256 volumes per system / 254 LUNs per port |
| Power | |
| Standard Dual Redundant Power Supplies | 2 Redundant Standard 500 watt 115/240 Auto-sensing |
| Dimensions and Weight | |
| Height | 5.25 inches / 13.34 cm. (4U) |
| Width | 19 inches / 48.26 cm. |
| Depth | 20 inches / 50.8 cm. |
| Maximum Installed Weight w/ mounting rails, all drives and controllers | approx - 49 Kg / 108 lbs |
| Rack Mount | Fits into a standard 19 inch rack |
| Environmental | |
| Operating Temperature Range | 5ºC to 35ºC (41ºF to 95ºF) |
| Operating Humidity Range | 20% to 80% non-condensing |
| Operating Altitude | 0 to 2,133m (0 to 7,000ft) |
| Non-operational Altitude | 0 to 12,192m (0 to 40,000ft) |
Management:
From Anywhere to Anywhere.
That's because–whether you're across town or halfway around the world–you can manage all Nexsan storage products remotely. Our management capabilities are intuitive and easy to use. They require minimal training. And all of our interfaces provide different levels of security to ensure proper authentication and prevent unwanted users from gaining access.
You can configure Nexsan E-Series, Beast and Boy products through our unique, secure and intuitive Web-based GUI tool. The interface uses standard HTML and is compatible with all mainstream browsers (Internet Explorer, Netscape, Opera, Mozilla, Firefox, Safari, etc.) that aren't hardware-, software- or Java™-runtime-specific. The embedded Web-browser GUI operates over the 10/100/1000 port, and supports e-mail alerts and SNMP traps. We also provide a standard serial port for local and direct system configuration.
In addition to the GUI, Nexsan Storage Tools – a comprehensive set of storage management software tools for Windows Server families–make it easy to manage and configure multiple units from a single GUI. Nexsan Storage Tools provide support for Windows Virtual Disk Service (VDS) and Microsoft Management Console (MMC), and include MPIO support for Nexsan RAID storage systems.
Nexsan Storage Tools:
All Nexsan disk arrays, including the SATABoy, SASBoy, SATABeast, SASBeast, and the B-Series come with Nexsan Storage Tools – a comprehensive suite of software, which was purpose-built for mid-sized organizations. Nexsan Storage Tools are available for Windows, Apple OS X, AIX and popular versions of Linux.
Nexsan Storage Tools for Windows
Storage Manager provides a single console from which multiple local and remote Nexsan storage products can be easily and securely managed and monitored. Key features include.
- Management for one or more disk arrays on the LAN or WAN
- Easy to use GUI to configure advanced disk array features
- Red-green-yellow status display of all disk arrays being monitored
- Create and expand volumes
- Use as a stand-alone application or from within Microsoft Management Console (MMC)


Nexsan Data Migration Manager makes it easy to move data onto your new Nexsan disk array or to migrate it from one RAID Disk Set to another – for load balancing, increased storage capacity or any number of other common goals.
Windows VDS Integration and Shell Extensions allow administration of Windows volumes and multiple Nexsan disk arrays directly from Windows management tools. Key features include:
- Seamless integration with Microsoft management tools including: Microsoft Storage Manager for SANs, DISKRAID and DISKPART command-line tools, Microsoft Server Manager and Computer Management, Microsoft Device Manager, Microsoft Disk Management and Windows Explorer
- Create, delete, expand and migrate volumes
- Map LUNs to Windows servers
- Supports both Fibre Channel or iSCSI
- Drill down on all of the Nexsan configuration data from within Microsoft Disk Management
IP Configuration Tool is used to configure Nexsan disk arrays. Features include:
- Automatically detects any Nexsan disk array on the local subnet
- Display status of each disk array (red-green-yellow)
- View and change IP settings
- View and change disk array details such as System name, unique ID and firmware version
Host Identification Tool displays the identifiers of local storage adapters such as Fibre Channel WWPNs and iSCSI IQNs.
MultiSan IO (MSIO) Manager and Drivers provides Multi-path I/O (MPIO) drivers and management software for Windows servers to deliver greater aggregate bandwidth and fault resilience. Features include:
- See detailed information about what paths, target disks and connections the Nexsan DSM (device specific module) has discovered
- Configure the path load balancing policy, path failover strategy and path priorities
- Monitor the health of multipathing, troubleshoot issues and view logs
- Configure alerts, email alerts and other options
- Manage MultiSan IO from a GUI or from a command line

Supports popular versions of Windows including:
- Windows XP (all 32-bit versions)
- Windows Server 2003 (all 32-bit and x64 versions)
- Windows Vista (all 32-bit and x64 versions)
- Windows Server 2008 (all 32-bit and x64 versions)
- Windows 7 (all 32-bit and x64 versions)
- Windows Server 2008 R2 (all x64 versions)
See the Nexsan Support site for details
| For Linux Nexsan Storage Tools for Linux provides an IP configuration tool to set up the disk array from a Linux system. Nexsan does not need to ship any specific software to enable interoperability and compatibility with Linux. Key features include:
|
For OS X Nexsan Storage Tools for OS X provide an IP configuration tool to set up the disk array from an OS X system. Nexsan does not need to ship any specific software to enable interoperability and compatibility with OS X. Key features include:
|
| For VMware Although Nexsan disk arrays are qualified with VMware, Nexsan does not ship any specific software to enable interoperability and compatibility with VMware ESX. Key features include:
|
For AIX For AIX, Nexsan provides a Multi-path I/O driver. Key features include:
|
Boy and Beast Product Family:
| Feature | SASBoy (SAS drives) |
SASBeast (SAS drives) |
SASBoy (SAS+SATA drives) |
SASBeast (SAS+SATA drives) |
SATABoy | SATABeast |
| Drive Types | SAS 300GB, 450GB, 600GB - 15000 RPM | SAS 300GB, 450GB, 600GB - 15000 RPM | SAS 300GB, 450GB, 600GB 15000 RPM and SATA 1TB 7200RPM | SAS 300GB, 450GB, 600GB - 15000 RPM and SATA 2TB and 1TB | SATA 1TB, 750GB, 500GB | SATA 2TB, 1TB, 750GB, 500GB |
| Drive Bays / Rack U | 14 Drive Bays / 3U | 42 Drive Bays / 4U | 14 Drive Bays/ 3U ( 4SAS w/10 SATA or 7SAS w/ 7SATA) | 42 Drive Bays / 4U (SAS or SATA in groups of 14) | 14 Drive Bays / 3U | 42 Drive Bays / 4U |
| Controllers | 1 Standard Dual Optional Dual RAID Engines per Controller | 1 Standard Dual Optional Dual RAID Engines per Controller | 1 Standard Dual Optional Dual RAID Engines per Controller | 1 Standard Dual Optional Dual RAID Engines per Controller | 1 Standard Dual Optional | 1 Standard Dual Optional |
| Battery Protected Cache per Controller | 2GB Standard | 2GB Standard | 2GB Standard | 2GB Standard | 512MB, 1GB or 2GB | 512MB, 1GB or 2GB |
| Host Ports | 2 FC or 2 SAS and 2 iSCSI Ports per Controller | 2 FC and 2 iSCSI Ports per Controller | 2 FC or 2 SAS and 2 iSCSI Ports per Controller | 2 FC and 2 iSCSI Ports per Controller | 2 FC or 2 SAS and 2 iSCSI Ports per Controller | 2 FC and 2 iSCSI Ports per Controller |
| Sustained Data Rates (with Dual Controllers) | 820 MB/s Reads | 1100+ MB/s Reads | 820 MB/s Reads | 1100+ MB/s Reads | 540 + MB/s Reads (with single controller) | 1100 MB/s Reads |
| Hardware RAID 6 | Included | Included | Included | Included | Included | Included |
| RAID Levels | 0, 1, 1+0, 4, 5, 6 | 0, 1, 1+0, 4, 5, 6 | 0, 1, 1+0, 4, 5, 6 | 0, 1, 1+0, 4, 5, 6 | 0, 1, 1+0, 4, 5, 6 | 0, 1, 1+0, 4, 5, 6 |
| LUNs | 254 per Controller | 254 per Controller | 254 per Controller | 254 per Controller | 254 per Controller | 254 per Controller |
| Redundant Power Supplies | 2 Redundant Standard 500 watt | 2 Redundant Standard | 2 Redundant Standard | 2 Redundant Standard | 2 Redundant Standard 400 watt | 2 Redundant Standard 760 watt |
| Global "Hot Drive Spares" | ||||||
| Hot-pluggable Controllers, Drives, Power Supplies | ||||||
| Multiple RAID sets and LUNs per RAID set | ||||||
| 254 LUNs per Controller | ||||||
| LUN Masking, ACL, Read Only Access | ||||||
| Nexsan WorldView Multi-unit Manager | ||||||
| Nexsan NexScan Onboard Browser Based GUI | ||||||
| Nexsan Tele-Guard Phone Home Manager | ||||||
| 3 yr. Warranty, Advanced Exchange, 24x7 Support |
Support:
Three Years Advance Replacement Warranty
Nexsan Technologies storage systems are warranted for three full years from the date of shipment. Upon verification of failure, replacement equipment will be shipped out to our customers. Return material authorizations will accompany all equipment shipped and can be issued either by our phone, fax, or email. (warranties are non-transferable without prior consent from Nexsan) Several levels of service upgrades are available for purchase.
Onsite spares Program
For maximum convenience and protection of critical storage devices, this program provides customers with on location spares. This program enables our customers to have in their facility all commonly used spare parts to facilitate rapid restoration of operations. . Along with our optional 24x7 telephone support, customers can now be assured of rapid resolution to any problem. Defective components can then be advance replaced for constant availability.
Next Business Day Onsite
Next Business Day support provides Monday through Friday, 8:00AM – 5:00PM (your local time excluding Nexsan holidays) on-site service with "Next Business Day�? response. Replacement parts are shipped via overnight service and if requested, a service representative will be onsite between 8:00AM - 5:00PM the following business day. Software related issues are generally managed remotely from our support center.
24 x 7 x 4hr Onsite
Gain the fastest and most comprehensive level of support, which delivers 24x7 with 4 hour response. Replacement parts are hand delivered with a service representative that will be onsite within 4 hours following diagnosis of hardware failure. Software related issues are generally managed remotely from our support center.
24 x 7 Telephone Support
For your convenience 24 x7 access to the Nexsan technical support team is also available as an upgrade to either the standard warranty or Next Business Day onsite upgrade.
Regulatory Approvals
CE, UL, CUL
Pricing Notes:
- 1Western Digital drive based systems perform AutoMAID levels 1 & 3 only.
- Drive configurations are not limited to the choices shown. Please contact us for other options.




