VAST Data has added replication functionality to its VAST OS software in release 3.6.
The all-QLC-flash array software vendor, with Optane metadata acceleration, can now replicate VAST array cluster data to a second VAST array cluster, and automatically failover if the first cluster crashes or is down for maintenance. This builds on VAST’s snapshot functionality.
Co-founder and CMO Jeff Denworth blogs: “VAST systems only replicate byte-range deltas using fine-grained counters. Replication jobs are performed in intervals of less than one minute … and while the solution is not synchronous, it’s pretty darn close.“
Howard Marks, VAST’s grandly-titled Plenipotentiary Extraordinaire (which means tech evangelist) blogs: “Native Replication performs periodic synchronisation from a directory on a source VAST Cluster to a target directory on a second VAST cluster using the system’s snapshot technology.”
Marks writes: “The target directory presents the latest version of the data in the folder for users to read and analyse directly, and since it’s a folder on the target VAST system they can perform that analysis at all-flash speed.
“VAST systems can take, and replicate, snapshots as frequently as once every 15 seconds, while point-in-time, asynchronous replication from most other storage vendors can only manage a snapshot every 15 minutes.”
There are three options. First, one VAST cluster replicates data to a read-only volume of another VAST cluster, and failover and failback are instantaneous. Second, one VAST cluster replicates read-only snapshots to an S3 endpoint of a customer’s choosing. In that case data is recoverable from S3 with file/object-level granularity, either from an active VAST cluster or from a remote VM called the “reader”.
Third, both approaches can be combined, and data services can immediately be failed over to another VAST cluster or data can be recovered via a remote S3 storage system.
Marks’s blog has more details.
Denworth says that VAST’s R&D team is growing quickly and is one of the largest storage software development teams in the world. Version 4 of the VAST OS is coming, and there will be more updates in a few weeks.
