KIOXIA America, Inc. has added online volume migration to its
KumoScale storage software based on NVM Express over Fabrics
(NVMe-oF) technology. Online volume migration is the latest feature
added to KumoScale software's growing list of advanced storage
functions. KIOXIA's KumoScale software suite makes it possible to
achieve virtualization and management of high-performance flash at data
center scale.
Volume
migration - moving a storage volume from one SSD to another - typically
requires temporarily removing the volume from service. This means that
applications must be quiesced, and business operations must come to a
halt for the duration of the data transfer. By enabling online volume
migration, KumoScale software eliminates application downtime and user
disruptions. Using KumoScale software, the volume to be moved remains
online and continues to serve I/O while the process of moving the data
to its new location proceeds. Volume migration is transparent to
applications connected to the volume.
The
target of a migration may be another drive within the same storage node
or another storage node. During migration, writes are forwarded to the
destination. When the transfer is complete, the host's connection is
switched to the new target. When necessary, KumoScale software can split
a volume and migrate a portion of it to enable SSD workloads to be
managed at fine granularity when volume sizes are large.
"KumoScale
software is architected to reliably deliver native NVMe-oF performance
on shared commodity hardware," said Joel Dedrick, vice president and
general manager, networked storage software, KIOXIA America, Inc. "For
mission-critical applications, downtime due to maintenance can be
extraordinarily costly. Eliminating the need for maintenance windows is
just one of the ways that we help our customers maximize the returns on
their data center investments."
Use Cases and Benefits
Volume migration can form the basis for a wide variety of functions integral to efficient storage management, including:
- QoS
Management - in multi-tenant environments volumes can be migrated as
needed for noisy neighbor abatement and SSD performance management
- Capacity rebalancing, snapshot/clone expansion, and thin-provisioned volume expansion
- Simplified
maintenance, including drive replacement/upgrade, storage node
maintenance, and software updates - volumes can be moved off drives with
expiring warranties to enable replacement
- Global
SSD wear management - volumes are migrated between physical drives and
across storage nodes as needed to increase the life cycle of individual
drives according to their remaining endurance
KIOXIA is a leading provider of NVMe SSDs, technology and data center software. For more information, please visit blog-us.kioxia.com/category/KumoScale or kumoscale.kioxia.com.