Press Releases

Nimbus Data Reveals BatArray™ Mobile Data Center Powered by Tesla Cybertruck

25 PB all-flash storage and multi-terabit-per-second ingress in a 100% EV-powered system

Irvine, CA, August 7, 2024 – Nimbus Data today unwrapped BatArray™, a ground-breaking fusion of the company’s FlashRack all-flash systems with Tesla’s Cybertruck, creating the world’s first mobile flash storage data center. BatArray demonstrates the exceptional energy efficiency of Nimbus Data’s all-flash systems and the sophistication of Tesla’s EV battery technology, showcasing a new way to tackle the massive data challenges brought on by the AI age.

“While I do not know if Elon Musk envisioned a bullet-proof data center on wheels when designing Cybertruck, Tesla has engineered a phenomenal machine with exactly that potential,” stated Thomas Isakovich, CEO and Founder of Nimbus Data. “We are ecstatic to showcase what is possible by uniting Cybertruck with the most energy efficient flash storage system on the market.”

Massive Storage Capacity Designed to Tackle Data Challenges at the Edge

Industry analysts predict that data growth at the edge will soon exceed data growth at traditional data centers, creating a new challenge – how to move this data for analysis, archival, or data migration purposes. Moving petabytes of data like digital media, financial records, satellite imagery, or scientific data across the Internet can take months or years across the fastest networks, an unacceptable reality that is constrained by the limitations of fiber optic networks and physics itself.

BatArray uses six FlashRack Turbo systems, each storing 1.5 PB, to house 9 PB of raw all-flash storage. After considering redundancy and 3:1 data reduction, 25 PB of effective capacity is possible. Cybertruck provides a 240V 40A power circuit in the truck bed. Although originally intended to power work tools in the field, because FlashRack Turbo is so energy efficient, it is possible to run the whole infrastructure from this single circuit. With its 123 kWh battery, Cybertruck can power the entire storage system for up 24 hours entirely from its EV battery.

Multi-Terabit Per Second Ingress and Egress Rates with AES-256 Encryption

Wrapped in a sleek black finish, BatArray looks fit for a superhero, and its performance reflects that. With its patented Parallel Memory Architecture, BatArray delivers up to 360 GBps of ingress performance, or approximately 3 terabits per second. This data rate is three times faster than the massive AWS Snowmobile, Amazon’s original data transfer vehicle based on a 45-foot long semi-trailer truck. All data is automatically encrypted in hardware using AES-256 with KMIP support. Egress speed is even faster, reaching up to 600 GBps, or nearly 5 terabits per second.

At maximum performance, one can fill BatArray to capacity in about 7 hours, still leaving over 200 miles over range in the Cybertruck battery for it to reach its destination without even needing to stop to charge. With 400 Gigabit Ethernet FR4 fiber cabling and transceivers, this transmission rate is possible over 2 km, allowing for long distance between BatArray and the source or destination connection points. BatArray supports industry standard NFS, SMB, S3, and NVMe-oF protocols.

See BatArray in Action

Nimbus Data is showcasing BatArray at the Future of Memory and Storage conference in Santa Clara, California, from August 6-8, 2024, booth 803. To learn more, contact Nimbus Data at [email protected] and visit our website at www.nimbusdata.com.

About Nimbus Data

Founded in 2003, Nimbus Data develops innovative flash storage solutions for data-intensive applications in cloud, AI, enterprise, and edge infrastructure. Our solutions include the powerful HALO storage software, FlashRack® all-flash systems, ExaDrive® solid state drives, and the ground-breaking Tectonic customer experience. Nimbus Data helps hundreds of organizations accelerate and protect their most critical data assets. To learn more, visit us at www.nimbusdata.com.