Memblaze in China Claims First RAID Software for NVMe SSDs, FlashRAID

Beijing Memblaze Technology Co., Ltd., China’s brand in enterprise flash memory production, showcases the world’s first software RAID product optimized to support NVMe SSDs – FlashRAID and PBlaze4 PCIe SSD at the Flash Memory Summit (FMS2016).

PBlaze4

FlashRAID is an optimized software data protection system of Memblaze, which specifically supports NVMe SSDs and provides data protection and storage management services. FlashRAID has better performance than traditional RAIDs, as it is optimized for high-performance storage medium, can support NVMe SSDs. It can also meet the development trend of multi-core CPUs, and give full play to the advantages of software RAID.

FlashRAID highlights:

Optimized specifically for NVMe SSD characteristics, it rebuilds key technologies of software RAID by combining multi-core CPU advantages, and provides data protection services for high-performance storage medium.
Its performance is linearly scalable as with the increase in the number of SSDs and CPUs, to bring the aggregation performance of NVMe SSD into full play;
Fast data reconstruction and automatic bandwidth equalization can ensure consistency in performance of services;
Storage pool management provides multi-layered, virtualized and flexible storage services;
Automatic layered storage of cold data and hot data can be achieved, to make use of the advantages of multiple storage medium (SSD/HDD).

In the performance test on RAID-5, Memblaze uses FlashRAID with four 1.6TB PBlaze4 PCIe SSDs. The results show that a random reading of over 2,500,000 (4KB) IO/s and a random writing of 300,000 (4K) IO/s can be achieved. It takes less than 30 minutes for the 1.6TB PBlaze4 disk to recover.

At the FMS2016, the FlashRAID solution showcased by Memblaze uses a super-micro server, configures four 1.6TB PBlaze4 PCIe SSDs, and demonstrates key functions of FlashRAID system including hot-plug of disk, simplified resource management and auto-tiering.

“Memblaze released PBlaze4 PCIe SSD that supports NVMe last year, which has been widely accepted by the market. PBlaze4’s success also marks that PCIe SSD has ushered in a new stage for development. To establish a highly efficient and reliable storage system is critical for solid state storage, and that is why FlashRAID was designed,” said Alan Wu, head of FlashRAID BU. “FlashRAID is expected to create customized solutions for sectors including distributed storage, HPC, cloud host and 4K non-linear editorial system, to improve the system performance and reliability in a comprehensive way.”

Speeches delivered by Memblaze at the FMS2016:

Tues, Aug 9th: Enterprise SSDs (SSDs Track) IO Pattern Based Optimization in SSD, by Memblaze CTO Lu Xiangfeng
Thurs, Aug 11th: Session 301-D: PCIe/NVMe Development Issues (PCIe Storage Track), New Data Protection System for NVMe SSD, by Memblaze senior technical director Wu Zhongjie