All-you-can-eat storage buffet with Napatech, Scale/IBM, Inspur, Viking/Kalray and platefuls of other good stuff – Blocks and Files
This week’s edition of our all-you-can-eat storage buffet has main plates featuring flavoursome Napatech SmartNICs, Scale Computing getting edgy in bed with IBM, Inspur knocking off another benchmark win and Viking/Kalray developing a FlashBox NVME SSD system with DPU acceleration.
There are side plates brimming with tasty finger food, so pick up a napkin and tuck in.
Napatech SmartNICs and radios
SW-defined radio platforms supplier Per Vices Corporation is using Napatech’s programmable Smart Network Interface Cards (SmartNICs) in its Cyan Storage and Playback offering. Applications such as real-time spectrum monitoring and recording require a high-bandwidth, lossless connection between the radio and the storage subsystem in order to ensure the integrity of data captured in real time across a wide spectrum.
Having a high-performance configuration for spectrum monitoring and recording brings benefits for use cases such as signal interception, spectrum policy enforcement, interference detection and the monitoring of restricted areas such as prisons, military facilities, government buildings and airports. See the article : Military Communications Market Size to Reach USD 62.96.
The Cyan Software-Defined Radio (SDR), which offers up to 16 independent receive chains, each with 1GHz of bandwidth and operation from near DC to 18GHz, must be balanced by the packet capture and monitoring capabilities of the Cyan Storage and Playback system. The Napatech SmartNIC uses four 40Gbps QSFP+ interfaces to the Cyan SDR and delivers:
- Capture, monitoring, recording and storage of data at up to 160Gbps;
- 100 per cent probability of Intercept (POI) across 16GHz of spectrum;
- High-performance data processing and higher-capacity storage with no dropped packets;
- Application-optimised CPU, GPU and RAM configurations;
- Easy integration within larger systems.
Scale Computing and IBM take it to the edge
Edge-focussed Scale Computing is twinning its HC3 appliances with IBM’s Edge Application Manager (EAM) — a management system running on Red Hat OpenShift. EAM enables the deployment, operation and remote management of AI, analytics, and IoT enterprise workloads at edge sites.
Jeff Ready, CEO and co-founder of Scale Computing, said the HC3/EAM infrastructure is “designed to be self-healing and automated, as well as added containerised application management that can help [organisations] grow into the new reality of edge computing. See the article : Global Software Defined Radio Market (2021 to 2030) – Growth, Trends, COVID-19 Impact and Forecasts – ResearchAndMarkets.com | Business.”
IBM’s Evarisitus Mainsah, GM, Hybrid Cloud and Edge Ecosystem, talked about “collaborating with Scale Computing to help clients deploy, operate and manage thousands of endpoints throughout their operations with IBM Edge Application Manager”. The point is to help customers act on “insights closer to where their data is being created, at the edge”.
Inspur racks up another SPC-1 benchmark
Chinese supplier Inspur said its AS13000G5 distributed, scale-out storage server system achieved an SPC-1 benchmark result of 6,300,529 IOPS and 0.781 ms latency, breaking the world record in distributed storage performance.
SPC-1 measures the ability of a storage system to run input-output operations, measured in calculated SPC-1 IOPS. To see also : Newswire & Press Release / a4ESSOR Achieves Acceptance for its ESSOR HDR Base Waveform – Military / Defense / Homeland Security – Leonardo S.p.a..
The AS13000G5 topped the rankings in single-node performance with a result 68 per cent higher than the runner-up. However it is the sixth highest SPC-1 result in absolute terms:
The AS13000G5 uses NVMe SSDs, and can be expanded to 5120 storage units, with IOPS reaching a theoretical 100 million.
Gartner says Inspur ranks in fifth position in global storage sales.
Viking and Kalray’s DPU-driven NVMe all-flash array
Sanmina’s Viking Enterprise BU and fabless processor developer Kalray are jointly developing a FlashBox array, a JBOF disaggregated storage system using Viking’s VDS2249R chassis and a Kalray K200-LP storage acceleration card based around its MPPA Coolidge DPU (Data Processing Unit).
The MPPA (Massively Parallel Processor Array) DPU is a programmable, data-centric processor and replaces, Kalray says, multiple X86 controller cards. It has up to 80 cores.
The MPPA Coolidge DPU is designed, Kalray says, to deliver an unprecedented level of integration, speed and performance at an affordable cost.
We have here, Blocks & Files thinks, a French alternative to Pensando. Kalray was founded in 2008 as a spin-off of CEA French lab. Its investors include Alliance Venture (Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi), Safran, NXP Semiconductors, CEA and Bpifrance.
The FlashBox will be publicly revealed in September. Get a Coolidge DPU product flyer here.
Shorts
Data protector Acronis has integrated its Cyber Protect Cloud with Jamf’s software, a standard in Apple Enterprise Management (AEM). The Jamf Pro application is used by system administrators to configure and automate IT administration tasks for macOS, iOS, iPadOS, and tvOS devices. MSPs can remotely deploy Acronis Cyber Protect Cloud’s range of backup, recovery, and cyber protection services for Apple devices, managing multiple Jamf Pro accounts for multiple instances through a single Acronis account.
This is ingenious. Taiwan-based Chenbro announced a 2U storage server chassis, the RM25324, which accommodates 24x 3.5-inch side access hot-swap hard drives, 7x low profile PCIe slots, and an ATX motherboard, optimised for computing and storage balance to support industrial storage, data centre, and digital surveillance applications. Usually, 24-bay 2U boxes use 2.5-inch drives, and this beast of a box with 3.5-inch disks can store 400TB raw.
Couchbase announced v7.0 of its Couchbase Server database, presenting it as a unified RDBMS+ NoSQL analytics database offering. It processes multi-statement SQL transactions by fusing together transactions and high-volume interactions. Couchbase claims that, for the first time, customers can do multi-document SQL ACID transactions with interactions in microseconds — all within one unified database platform. The company, with 500+ customers, has had its IPO and began trading on July 21.
CrossBar has found a new niche market for its ReRAM (Resistive RAM). It’s being used in hardware security applications with PUF (Physically Unclonable Function) keys as a replacement for SRAM. We’re told that, compared to SRAM, ReRAM-based PUF cryptographic key technology has a higher level of randomness, much lower bit error rate, resists invasive attacks, and has the capability of handling a broad range of environmental variations without requiring fuzzy extractors, helper data or heavy error correction code.
NBC Olympics, part of the NBS Sports Group, is using petabytes of Dell EMC PowerScale storage system capacity to store video captured at two production locations for the Olympic Games in Tokyo for sharing with USA viewers.
Dell Technologies commissioned Forrester Research to conduct a Total Economic Impact (TEI) study to examine the benefits, costs and risks enterprises encounter when deciding to invest in as-a-Service. Dell’s APEX Data Storage Services helped the customers in the Forrester TEI study:
- Eliminate costs of over-provisioning, reducing storage costs by 20 to 45 per cent;
- Save as much as 50 per cent in IT time;
- Accelerate deployment time of storage by as much as 86 per cent.
Data lake analytics developer Dremio announced a cloud-native SQL-based data lakehouse service, Dremio Cloud, saying it enables organisations of any size to leverage a no-copy open data architecture that eliminates the need to copy data into expensive and proprietary data warehouses. An automatic onboarding option establishes the necessary connection to the user’s AWS account, allowing data consumers to connect via their favourite tools and start querying data instantly.
Cloud-native archiver FalconStor announced the pricing of an underwritten registered public offering of 285,000 newly issued shares of its common stock at a public offering price of $4.10 per share, for total gross proceeds of approximately $1.16 million. It will use the cash to expand marketing and distribution, ongoing product development programs, finance potential acquisitions of complementary businesses, and for working capital and general corporate purposes.
Veeam’s Kasten business unit announced its Kubernetes-focussed K10 data management software is now available through the Red Hat Marketplace.
Microchip Technology today announced the Adaptec Smart Storage PCIe Gen-4 NVMe Tri-Mode SmartRAID 3200 RAID Adapters, and SmartHBA 2200 and HBA 1200 Host Bus Adapters. These adapters enable NVMe and 24G SAS connectivity and manageability. They deliver between 8 and 32 ports of NVMe 4.0 and/or 24G SAS drive support, and offer both 8x and 16x PCIe Gen-4 CPU interface options and up to a 4x performance improvement over previous generations.
OWC has announced its Envoy Pro SX Thunderbolt portable SSD, saying it offers the fastest and most reliable performance available in a portable drive. It’s certified dust-proof, drop-proof, and waterproof, and provides up to 2,847MBps. 240GB to 2TB models are available now, starting at $199 on MacSales.com.
PNY has announced ultra-high-endurance LX2030 and LX3030 SSDs for Chia plotting. They are M.2 drives with an NVMe PCIe Gen-3 interface. The 2TB LX3030 has a Chia plotting TBW rating of up to 54,000. A 1TB LX3030 can create 2PB of plots before wearing out — 27,000TBW. A 2TB LX2030 sustains 10,000TBW.
Pure Storage announced FlashStack as-a-Service, having flagged its intentions in November last year. FlashStack is a reference architecture converged system using Pure flash storage with Cisco servers and networking. It’s also adding Portworx Cloud Consumption to allow customers’ consumption of Portworx (consumed hours) to match the ebbs and flows of their applications instead of buying specific Portworx licences per server.
NAS supplier QNAP has signed up Tech Data as a distributor in the UK.
Quobyte, which produces unified block, file and object storage for high-performance computing and machine learning, announced it has a native HDFS driver. This implements and replaces the HDFS API. Applications talk to Quobyte instead of HDFS, but won’t notice the difference.
Logic meets magic — Spectra Logic is partnering StorMagic to produce an end-to-end active archive for video surveillance and digital evidence management. StorMagic is contributing its ARQvault, a data-mover and intelligent repository using analytics to manage and retrieve digital assets. These assets will be stored in Spectra Logic’s BlackPearl NAS system and tape libraries.
Storage Made Easy (SME) announced an SMBStream product ,which accelerates access to SMB shares over the internet. A small agent is co-located in the same network as the NAS or Filer providing the SMB Share, providing access to a containerised controller at a remote site via a TLS 1.3-encrypted tunnel. SMB acceleration is a factor of 10x faster than a typical VPN, and is tolerant of high latency and dropped packets. SMBStream is filer-agnostic and compatible with on-premise NAS or Windows Filer shares, or in-cloud SMB shares such as Amazon FSx or Azure Files.
Chinese supplier TerraMaster has a D16 Thunderbolt 3 compact 16-bay tower storage product with Thunderbolt 3 interface and up to 40Gbps data transfer speed. This is suitable for 4K/8K video editing. Equipped with a pair of Thunderbolt 3 40Gbps ports and a professional-grade RAID controller, the D16 Thunderbolt 3 delivers speeds of up to 2,817MBps when fitted with 16 SSDs in RAID 0 array mode on Windows. In RAID 6 mode, the storage device can deliver speeds of up to 2,480MBps.
TerraMaster also announced a F4-421 4-bay professional NAS powered by an Intel quad-core processor with dual Gigabit network ports for improved networking reliability. It supports network aggregation and failover with dual LAN ports, automatically switching to the second networking port in cases of downtime.
Data protector Veeam said its annual recurring revenue increased by 26 per cent year-over-year in the second 2021 quarter — its 14th consecutive quarter of double digit growth. Later this year it will release cloud-native offerings for AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, Office 365 and the first integration of Kasten K10 for Kubernetes into the Veeam Platform.
Microfocus’s Vertica analytics platform has reached version 11, delivering support for Docker containers and Kubernetes, machine learning and time series capabilities, and Eon Mode in Azure. Vertica claims it is a unified analytics platform with the fastest performance at unlimited scale.
Virtium announced second-generation StorFly Series3 M.2 NVMe SSDs supporting PCIe Gen-4. They are DRAM-less, have up to 2TB capacity, use 3D TLC NAND, and support industrial temperatures of -40°C to 85°C as well as ruggedization options for extreme environments.
Virtuozzo has bought OnApp. The resulting system stack for CSPs, MSPS and hosting providers will pair Virtuozzo’s virtualization, containerization, storage and orchestration capabilities with features of OnApp’s self-service management platform.
Votiro can sanitize files coming from AWS storage with its Secure File Gateway and an S3 bucket connector. It disarms the file of any malware, creating a completely safe version. After the file has been processed, it is returned to the S3 bucket — replacing the original file with the tagged, cleaned file — and safe for users to open, save, edit, and share without risk.
Winbond x8 Octal interface NAND can provide cost effective embedded code storage in high density and in the same form factor as NOR Flash. It’s announced interoperability with Synopsys’s DesignWare Synchronous Serial Interface (SSI) IP, which offers high transfer rates and low latency. Together they deliver a NAND flash memory product for automotive, mobile and IoT SoCs.
On-premises storage array service provider Zadara announced that Africa’s largest network of interconnected, carrier- and cloud-neutral data centre facilities has added Zadara’s edge cloud services to its marketplace. Africa Data Centres (ADC) gives customers in its facilities access to fully managed IT infrastructure on demand. Zadara’s products and services are currently available in Midrand, South Africa, and will soon be expanded into all 16 ADC locations throughout the continent.
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