Mellanox Collaborates With OCZ …

OCZ Technology Group, Inc. and Mellanox Technologies, Ltd have collaborated to deliver flash I/O storage performance and fault tolerance to VMware clusters on top of on-host server flash and HDDs.

These SAN-less, fault tolerant capabilities were presented in OCZ’s booth at VMworld 2013, Moscone Convention Center.

The combination of the Mellanox ConnectX-3 EN 40GbE NIC with OCZ’s VXL Software replicates VMware datastores in virtualized SAN-less clusters. The combined solutions deliver Ethernet connectivity, intelligent and efficient cache and flash volume distribution of PCIe flash resources while enabling HA and fault tolerance services of VMware clusters.

To achieve this capability, a virtualized environment containing two servers (with OCZ VXL 1.3.1 Software, OCZ Z-Drive R4 PCIe flash cards and Mellanox ConnectX-3 EN NICs in each) run virtualized enterprise loads that include such applications as SQL Server and Exchange Server. SAN-less HA and fault tolerance of this environment is maintained by VXL Software storage network sharing, HA and mirroring capabilities using the high-speed, low latency Mellanox NIC to the secondary server.

"This industry-first solution enables VMware virtualized data centers to benefit from flash-level performance while retaining network accessibility and fault tolerance using our 40GbE NIC interconnection to handle the server-to-server enterprise storage loads," said Motti Beck, director of enterprise market development, Mellanox. "We are very pleased to extend our collaboration with OCZ enabling virtualized environments to benefit from highly available, low latency SAN-less deployments."

"The combination of on-host flash with our VXL Software enables lower TCO in the software-defined data center by increasing VM density and server utilization," said Dr. Allon Cohen, VP of software and solutions, OCZ. "Our collaboration with Mellanox to enable lower latency and increased bandwidth connectivity between servers enables these environments to enjoy the TCO and performance gain improvements while retaining all of the benefits of a SAN-less, software-defined deployment without compromises or limitations."

The ConnectX-3 EN 40/56GbE NIC delivers high-bandwidth and Ethernet connectivity for performance-driven server and storage applications in enterprise data centers, HPC and embedded environments. Its low power and application acceleration for converged I/O infrastructures eliminate the need for multiple Ethernet connections to the server while maximizing server and storage performance throughput. This results in reduced operating costs and network complexity.

VXL Caching and Virtualization Software distributes randomized data between all available flash cells locally on-host while delivering a virtual performance system that accelerates VM applications. It creates a flash virtualization layer on top of the virtualization hypervisor (such as ESXi) to enable IT managers to dynamically deploy flash resources exactly to the needs of VMs when the VMs need them. This approach enables intelligent and on-demand distribution of flash resources between all connected VMs so that the Z-Drive R4 PCI SSD can be virtualized as a highly available network resource to be shared amongst any VM in the cluster. The result is that no VM inefficiently occupies flash when it can be better used elsewhere in the environment.