All Flash Object Storage: Dell EMC ECS EXF900 Appliances Support New Workloads with Outstanding Performance
Fri, 24 Sep 2021 13:34:58 -0000
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The data storage industry has three distinct pillars: block, file, and object. Traditionally, object storage has been leveraged for backup, long term archive, and data lake storage. It has been regarded as “cheap and deep”, but that perception is beginning to change as more and more application workloads suited to object storage are evolving.
With the introduction of flash-based storage systems, object is now capable of handling high performance workloads at low latencies. Object use cases are expanding into other workloads such as Artificial Intelligence (AI), Deep Learning (DL), Machine Learning (ML), and DevOps. These analytical applications produce a wide range of data types and sizes. With object storage supporting unlimited fully customizable metadata, these features make it easier to locate data for use in AI and ML algorithms, offering enhanced insight for our customers.
Exponential data growth in recent years presents economic challenges to companies. The scalable architecture of object storage means it’s well suited to handle data growth, allowing customers to add additional nodes when required.
Elastic Cloud Storage (ECS), Dell EMC’s object storage system, is capable of scaling linearly based on capacity and performance. With flash-based storage, object is a viable alternative for addressing different business needs. Additionally, with the cost of flash storage falling and price points coming close to those of HDDs, the cost difference between the two technologies is narrowing. Customers can leverage higher performance and cost-effective object storage to gain the necessary insight from their data by using AI and ML to extract the intelligence they require to make strategic business decisions.
Over time, the S3 API has become the defacto standard for object storage. S3 allows for sharing of code, software, and tools -- which fits perfectly into the agile development world of DevOps. Having robust APIs is critical, because it allows customers to leverage automation and orchestration methods to respond quickly as required. Object storage APIs that are application and cloud centric allow you to deploy applications rapidly through code and processes. In certain industry verticals such as medical, financial, media, or automotive, flash object can be leveraged for research, financial modeling, streaming services, or CAD use cases. These are ideal for the type of applications that use massive data sets and high performing environments.
In November 2020, we launched our flash object appliance: the Dell EMC EXF900. It is built with NVMe-based SSDs on Dell EMC PowerEdge servers, and leverages the NVMeOF (non-volatile memory express over fabrics) protocol for its backend network. This enables node-to-node communication and unlocks the true potential of the all-flash system’s throughput rate, especially in large scale deployments.
With that, we are seeing incredible performance improvements in terms of bandwidth and transactions per second (TPS) when comparing the EXF900 to previous appliance releases.
We believe the EXF900, with its enterprise performance levels, is perfectly suited to serve the changing workload needs of our customers. The modern data center is evolving and so are the workloads our customers are running on our systems. With its high performance and ability to automate easily, the EXF900 can deliver the scalability and agility they need.
This significant combination of performance and security features ensures that ECS can support customers’ data-intensive workload requirements while protecting data from malicious activities.
Authors:
Finbarr O’Riordan @finbarrorcork on Twitter
Christoffer Braendstrup