StorONE has added NVMe-over-Fabrics connectivity to its S1 Enterprise array software, speeding data access to sub-millisecond levels.
The S1 file, block and object storage software has a cacheless architecture which delivers high performance through a ground-up redesign of the storage stack using commodity hardware. NVMe-over-Fabrics (NVMe-oF) provides local PCIe-attached drive performance across a network link between a host and an external storage system. The NVMe-oF specification extends NVMe onto suitable storage fabrics such as Ethernet, Fibre Channel and InfiniBand.
Gal Naor, CEO and co-founder of StorONE, said in a statement: “By integrating the NVMe-oF protocol into our existing platform rather than creating a new product for organisations to purchase, we are better able to fulfill our mission of turning storage from an IT cost centre to a resource that provides critical competitive advantages.”
StorONE says its NVMe-oF implementation supports NVMe-over-TCP and Ethernet RDMA (RoCE) to reduce IO latency while supporting all block IO features, including high availability and asymmetric active-active failover. Existing customers, after upgrading, can take advantage of NVMe-oF using existing hardware, such as iSCSI hardware.
As far as StorONE is concerned NVMe-oF is a feature, not a product. From its viewpoint any block-access all-flash storage array not offering NVMe-oF access is behind the times and at an increasing disadvantage. It has adopted datacentre-class Ethernet lossless (RoCE) and ordinary Ethernet (NVMe/TCP) methods but not NVMe-over-Fibre Channel.
There has been a flurry of recent NVMe/TCP support announcements, including Lightbits, Fungible, Dell EMC, VMware and NetApp. It’s becoming table stakes in the enterprise storage array game.
