Fujitsu this week launched the ETERNUS DX89000 high-end array (tune in here for my write-up).
I was struck by the absence of NVMe drive and NVMe-oF fabric interconnect support – apart from a couple of NVMe drives in a cache sub-system.
So I asked Fujitsu about this omission. Unsurprisingly it already had a press statement in the works about its NVMe plans.
Today the vendor said it will introduce purpose-built NVMe storage products. These will complement existing ETERNUS hybrid flash/disk and all-flash arrays.
This plan includes NVMeoF interconnect support, according to Frank Reichart, Fujitsu senior director for product marketing storage and data centre solutions.
NVMe is the place to be
All mainstream storage array suppliers support NVMe drive and fabric access – either now or will do so in the near future.
According to Fujitsu, future storage systems based on the NVMe protocol and PCIe bus technology will enable customers to manage massive parallel data access without having to buy more storage systems.
With such access, external block array data access is much faster than external filer array access. Of necessity the latter has a filesystem stack to traverse and this takes up CPU cycles and time.
Fujitsu does not say when it is ready to market an NVMe-supporting array but we think the end of 2019 is realistic.
Speeds and feeds
Want to know more about storage drive access protocols? Check out our story on Burlywood, a flash controller start-up, in which we compare SATA, SAS and NVMe.
