Accusys ExaSAN A16T2-Share Thunderbolt 2 Storage SAN Review

Introduction

When Thunderbolt first emerged as the next great interface, not many thought it would catch on despite the throughput. Now five years after its birth into the market Thunderbolt now in its third generation has teamed up with USB 3.1. In the last five years, we have seen plenty of Thunderbolt storage come and go. Devices from LaCie, WD, and Drobo ring a bell, and while all of those are solid appliances in their own right, none have had the level of features as the A16T2-Share from Accusys.

The A16T2-Share in its own right it more than just a Thunderbolt DAS and while it can function as one, it can also function as the world's first Thunderbolt SAN. While many of past reviews on Thunderbolt devices have centered on connecting a single PC or Mac, the Accusys unit supports four Thunderbolt 2 host ports. When equipped with 8TB drives, this solution with its 16 bays can support 128TB of capacity with performance upwards of 2100 MB/s.

With all of the above said, the Accusys unit is no small storage solution. Coming in a 3U rackmount enclosure, this solution weighs in at a solid 50 Lbs., and coupled with its dimensions of 22 x 17 x 5 makes for a substantial bit of kit. As mentioned previously, this solution uses a Thunderbolt 2 host interface with four host ports available. Internally, the disk interface has been SAS equipped with support for SATA drives and with that sixteen bays are available. RAID levels include 0, 1, 5, 6 and 0+1 and are backed by the LSI SAS3108 controller with 2GB of DDR3 cache.