Mellanox
Technologies, Ltd., a leading supplier of
high-performance, end-to-end smart interconnect solutions for data
center servers and storage systems, today introduced new BlueField-based
storage controllers, which are being showcased this week at the Flash
Memory Summit conference. These controllers offer ultra-high performance
for Ethernet Storage Fabrics, along with extreme efficiency and
programmable virtualization for NVMe over Fabrics (NVMe-oF), empowering
customers to build and deploy the world's fastest and most flexible
networked flash storage solutions.
The
BlueField BF1600 and BF1700 storage controllers deliver over 4 million
IOPS with NVMe-oF, up to 200Gb/s of network and PCIe bandwidth, and
network ports configurable as either Ethernet or InfiniBand. They
provide leading performance for NVMe over RoCE (RDMA over Converged
Ethernet), InfiniBand, and TCP/IP, and include smart offloads for
storage including NVMe-oF, erasure coding, and T10-DIF data integrity
signatures. The BlueField SoC integrates the award winning ConnectX-5
network adapter with sixteen 64-bit Arm cores to create a
fully-programmable environment for storage software such as compression,
encryption, RAID, and virtualization. The new BlueField storage
controllers improve the performance and efficiency and extend the
capabilities of Ethernet Storage Fabrics. In addition they fully support
advanced InfiniBand-based storage solutions.
"Storage,
server, and cloud customers are telling us they need faster, more
efficient ways to network and virtualize NVMe flash," said Kevin
Deierling, vice president of marketing at Mellanox Technologies. "These
BlueField storage controllers tightly-integrate flash connectivity,
networking, and Arm processors to maximize performance and efficiency,
while eliminating the need for a separate CPU in storage and
hyperconverged appliances. This makes them perfect for connecting and
virtualizing the fastest non-volatile storage."
BlueField
storage controller cards are sampling today with fully qualified
solutions expected in Q4. The cards are being integrated into storage
systems by multiple original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) and original
design manufacturers (ODMs). All BlueField storage controllers,
SmartNICs, and development systems include the ability to accelerate
NVMe-oF.
"NVMe
over Fabrics continues to be one of the hottest storage topics amongst
both customers and vendors," said George Crump, lead analyst at Storage
Switzerland. "Some NVMe-oF solutions use centralized flash arrays and
others use a hyperconverged model, but both models can benefit from a
Storage Controller that can support 200 Gb/s of network throughput with
programmability and hardware offloads. The Mellanox BlueField storage
controllers are extremely well-positioned to network the ongoing flash
storage revolution."
Industry Support:
E8 Storage: "E8
Storage delivers revolutionary, shared NVMe storage solutions via our
patented software running on top of Mellanox Ethernet Storage Fabric
technology," said Ziv Serlin, VP of Architecture and Co-Founder at E8
Storage. "We are excited to be working with Mellanox to incorporate the
integrated networking and Arm CPU capabilities in BlueField SmartNICs
into our solutions, providing greater performance and efficiency to our
customers."
Excelero:
"Mellanox ConnectX adapters and Spectrum switches already help power
the distributed, extremely fast, and software-defined Excelero NVMesh,"
said Yaniv Romem, CTO and Co-Founder at Excelero. "BlueField offers an
exciting combination of high-speed networking, NVMe storage
virtualization, and programmable cores that can enable client-side
offloads for Excelero NVMesh and free up more CPU for applications. We
are already testing BlueField SmartNICs and look forward to working with
Mellanox to give customers the best possible converged and
disaggregated NVMe storage solutions."
Kaminario:
"Kaminario Cloud Fabric is built to provide extreme flexibility and
scalability through high-performance software-defined storage for our
customers," said Eyal David, CTO at Kaminario. "We leverage Mellanox
adapters in our storage nodes to support RoCE in an Ethernet Storage
Fabric, and BlueField controllers enable us to deliver higher
performance and efficiency to maximize the benefits of NVMe over
Fabrics."
Microsemi: "Microsemi
and Mellanox have worked together to enable high-performance storage
and server solutions," said Andrew Dieckmann, vice president of
marketing for data center solutions at Microsemi, a wholly owned
subsidiary of Microchip Technology."BlueField's target application space
in networked storage and integration of PCIe Gen 4 makes it an
excellent platform for deployment with Microsemi Switchtec PCIe
switches, including our latest Switchtec PCIe Gen 4 switches offering
the lowest latency, lowest power and highest reliability in the
industry. We look forward to continuing our work with Mellanox BlueField
as we expand our family of innovative Switchtec, Flashtec, SmartRAID
and SmartHBA devices."
NetApp:
"NetApp has long used Mellanox network controllers to support server
connectivity, including NVMe-oF on our E-series arrays," said Robin
Huber, VP E-Series Storage Group at NetApp. "We look forward to
continuing our partnership with Mellanox as we continue to roll out our
portfolio of NVMe over Fabrics support."
Samsung:
"NVMe over Fabrics and increasingly fast networking represents an
important approach to connecting NVMe SSDs with next-gen servers in
enterprise and cloud data centers," said Ilker Cebeli, Senior Director,
Memory Product Planning, Samsung Semiconductor, Inc. "As Samsung
delivers faster Z-NANDTM, we intend to continue working closely with
Mellanox ConnectX-5 adapters and BlueField controllers to create
high-performance Ethernet Storage Fabric."
SK hynix: "SK
hynix's PE6000 series supports NVMe over Fabrics using Mellanox
adapters and new NVMe features," said Jason Jinsoo Kang, VP, Head of
NAND Product Planning Office at SK hynix. "Visit SK hynix Booth 107 at
Flash Memory Summit to see a live demo of NVMe-oF (NVMe-over-Fabrics)
using SK hynix's NVMe SSD with Mellanox ConnectX-5 network adapters and a
Mellanox Spectrum Ethernet switch."
Toshiba: "High-speed
networking and RDMA using RoCE on Mellanox adapters are already part of
the Toshiba KumoScaleTM NVMe-oFTM solution," said Sudhakar Mungamoori,
Director of Cloud Technology Solutions at Toshiba Memory America, Inc.
"Mellanox is showing great innovation with their BlueField storage
controllers, which can enable NVMeTM over Fabrics to run entirely on a
single, integrated card."
Western Digital:
"Mellanox BlueField shows great promise as an NVMe storage controller,"
said Scott Hamilton, senior director, product management, Western
Digital's Data Center Systems business unit. "As Western Digital
innovates around new storage solutions and data center architectures, we
look forward to working with Mellanox to help enable high-performance
infrastructures for today and into the future."