6.7.18
DataCore Software announced today that it has enhanced its software-defined storage solutions, allowing companies to realize the substantial IOPS and latency improvements enabled through support for Emulex® Gen 6 (16/32Gb) Fibre Channel (FC) Host Bus Adapters (HBAs) by Broadcom. With this update, DataCore continues to eliminate storage bottlenecks and deliver the performance improvements needed to meet the business requirements for real-time data – simply and cost-effectively.
This release is also an example of the ongoing collaboration between DataCore and Broadcom to deliver maximum performance and flexibility, as both companies continue working towards enabling NVMe over Fabrics (NVMe-oF) capabilities for workloads that require the absolute lowest possible latency and highest performance. IT organizations looking to be NVMe-oF ready should consider the Emulex Gen 6 and DataCore’s software-defined storage solution as a combination that will give them the peace of mind that they will be ready to implement newer, faster technologies in a cost-effective and efficient manner.
By deploying DataCore software-defined storage and Emulex Gen 6 Fibre Channel HBAs, organizations gain a high-speed, dedicated network fabric that optimizes existing storage investments and is ready for the faster all-flash arrays (AFA) and NVMe-based storage systems. The latest Emulex Gen 6 FC HBAs deliver higher performance than previous generations, with less than half the latency, supporting up to 1.6 million IOPS on a single port.
Simplifying Storage Provisioning for Faster Arrays
DataCore software provides a virtual storage pool with existing and new storage systems that dynamically assigns workloads to optimal storage tiers based on performance requirements. With DataCore software-defined storage, improving performance and capacity is as simple as adding new storage arrays to the FC fabric and assigning them a storage tier. Infrastructure teams are no longer required to profile applications and assign the new, faster storage to specific applications. Instead, storage migration happens automatically and transparently, with no downtime.
NVMe Delivers Performance Improvements for Demanding Workloads
As companies deploy an increasing amount of all-flash arrays to accelerate performance, data storage has been getting consistently faster. However, these solid-state disks have become so fast that the storage network and disk input/output (I/O) have emerged as a bottleneck. Emulex Gen 6 FC HBA connectivity alleviates the network bottleneck by accelerating server processing problems with NVMe, whereby solid-state storage is connected directly to the PCIe bus. NVMe significantly improves both random and sequential performance by reducing latency, enabling high levels of parallelism, and streamlining the command set while providing support for security, end-to-end data protection, and other client and enterprise features that users require.
Performance and Utilization Improvements
DataCore software-defined storage, powered by patented adaptive parallel I/O technology, maximizes utilization of multi-core processors to solve the I/O bottleneck in order to achieve greater productivity and further consolidation of server technology by allowing more applications, VMs and workloads to run. By doing so, DataCore is able to dramatically cut latency and drive the most I/O performance from both existing storage systems and new flash arrays including NVMe, enabling IT departments to get maximum performance and value from their investments.
“DataCore and Broadcom have collaborated to provide customers with the fastest Fibre Channel connectivity that combines low-latency and highest IOPS performance with NVMe over Fibre Channel support to meet today’s business-critical workloads, as well as enabling next-gen applications to run at scale on existing SAN infrastructure,” said Jeff Hoogenboom, general manager, Emulex Connectivity division at Broadcom. “Emulex Fibre Channel HBAs and Brocade switches by Broadcom can run traditional SCSI FCP concurrently with the NVMe over Fibre Channel command set on the same Fibre Channel network and the same AFA, making the transition to the all NVMe datacenter seamless.”
“As businesses look to add NVMe to enhance their datacenters in the future, they will find no better or easier-to-deploy technology than the combined Emulex Gen 6 and DataCore software-defined storage solution,” said Steven Hunt, product management leader at DataCore. “Unlike other NVMe solutions, which have deployment limitations or require new network fabrics, ours is essentially a plug-and-play solution that will enable companies to immediately begin realizing the significant benefits of NVMe.”
