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.

Deni Connor is principal analyst for Storage Strategies NOW.