Fujitsu Eternus CD10000 S2 Hyperscale Software-Defined Storage System

Fujitsu Ltd. introduces the second-generation Eternus CD10000, its hyperscale software-defined storage system.

Already the most scalable and capable storage system, the Eternus CD10000 S2 provides more powerful tools to meet the data handling challenges of the petabyte age.

Organizations are drowning in data as the global amount of information generated and kept online continues to multiply. There are three key problems: increased demands on scalability, greater complexity and cost, and the threat of major disruption when data goes offline during migration between systems due to physical storage limitations. The company is working closely with customers and partners in data-heavy industries such as service providers, public sector, finance, transport, research and education to deliver reliable data services at reduced total costs.

Based on the open source unified, distributed Ceph storage system, the Eternus CD10000 provides unlimited and cost-efficient modular scalability for both storage capacity and performance, at zero downtime. It is delivered with end-to-end system management for soft – and hardware and includes maintenance and quality assurance for the whole system – including third-party components – enabling customers to enjoy the cost benefits of using open source based technology while also assuring enterprise support.

Bernhard Brandwitte, VP, global storage business, Fujitsu Technology Solutions GmbH, says: “The Eternus CD10000 revolutionizes the way that organizations deal with ever-increasing online data. Fujitsu was the first global storage technology provider to enable organizations to regain control over spiraling storage costs, by removing system bottlenecks with a hyperscale, open source-based storage optimization platform for online storage. We can now store 10 times more data at the same data center space while reducing costs per terabyte by as much as a factor of ten compared to the previous generation.“

The second-generation Eternus CD10000 redefines storage economics by optimizing storage investments, ensuring BC, and shortening time-to-production with validated solutions.

How Fujitsu reduces data growth costs
The Eternus CD10000 S2 includes enhancements to reduce storage costs and space requirements in the data center. New types of storage nodes can host up to 60TB of data in a single rack unit, further reducing space requirements. New hard- and software functions and technologies also reduce the cost per terabyte by a factor of up to ten.⁽¹⁾

New design storage nodes called ‘Flex Node’ and ‘Density Node’ enable higher granularity in adding capacity and performance. Flex Nodes support storage performance-oriented usage scenarios while providing good scalability, while Density Nodes are optimum for storing large amounts of data in a minimum amount of space and at the lowest possible costs per terabyte (as low as between €0.007 to 0.013/GB/month). Simply by adding system nodes, the Eternus CD10000 S2 can cover capacity up to 50PB and beyond, supporting scenarios of unpredictable data growth.

Since the Eternus CD10000 S2 internal system management is based on Ceph software, older hardware nodes can be replaced by fully compatible newer generations without system downtime, therefore extending system lifecycle by 10 to 15 years in comparison with traditional RAID storage systems. This also reduces system migration requirements.

One of the latest contributions by Fujitsu to the Ceph open source community has been an optimized Erasure Coding, providing data protection through redundancy while reducing disk capacity requirements and costs.

A further enhancement to the Eternus CD10000 S2 is the support for more disaster resilience options, achieved by either stretching one storage node cluster across two sites, or by implementing two discrete system clusters. As traditional backup solutions reach their limits in the multi-petabyte dimensions, the company has introduced an backup-in-a-box concept to provide large-scale data protection. This adds flexibility and the ability to deal with complete site failure, while ensuring fast data recovery, even on a massive scale.

Based on existing customer scenarios, the company has developed validated solutions enabling a fast implementation of software-defined storage. These solutions cover enterprise file sync and share, online archives and cloud backup. For OpenStack projects where Ceph-based storage is the most suitable storage architecture, the company recently announced Primeflex for OpenStack, a complete solution that integrates Eternus CD10000 with Primergy servers and OpenStack cloud software. The company is an active contributor to the OpenStack Initiative and recently attained Gold Membership

Jack Rondoni, VP, storage networking, Brocade Communication Systems, Inc. says: “Clustered storage platforms like the Eternus CD10000 S2 require resilient, low-latency networks as a foundation to deliver high-quality data services. We are partnering with Fujitsu to deliver high-performance storage fabrics as part of an overall solution that improves application availability and helps ensure non-disruptive scale-out to support a variety of high-performance workloads and data protection initiatives.“

Ben Cherian, director, partners, channel and alliances, storage and big data, Red Hat, Inc. says: “Fujitsu was the first hardware provider to embed Ceph technology, and, today, that commitment is reaffirmed with the announcement of the Fujitsu Eternus CD10000 S2 storage system. By combining Red Hat Ceph Storage with the new features in the Fujitsu Eternus CD10000 S2 storage system, customers may more quickly and cost-effectively deploy a software-defined storage solution in their next-generation hyperscale environments.“

The Eternus CD10000 S2 is available in EMEIA and in the Americas from the company and select experts that offer Advanced Server Solutions. Prices vary by specification and region. Other regions will announce local availability later in 2015.

⁽¹⁾ According to Fujitsu calculations. With introduction of the Density Nodes compared to the predecessor based on a of four-node minimum configuration.