E4 Computer Engineering in Italy Develops Hyper-Converged Architecture

E4 Computer Engineering SPA and HGST, Inc. announced the results of tests carried out independently on a Virtual Storage appliance based on HGST, Inc.’s NVMe disk and Vmware, Inc.‘s Virtual SAN powered by E4.

The objective of this configuration was to surpass the standard levels in terms of performance (IO/s, bandwidth and disk throughput) within a hyper-converged environment in which software defined storage is used instead of a conventional SAN.

To overtake common throughput, a series of component were integrated that they had never been tested before: Virtual SAN 6.1, NVMe disk, Mellanox Technolofgies Ltd.‘s 40GbE, Avago Technologies Limited‘s LSI controller on an E4’s x86 industry-standard server based on Intel Corp.‘s technology.

Solution optimized to push each component above standard levels:

Virtual SAN 6.1 to move virtualization infrastructure towards software defined storage.
SSDs, with the new specification NVMe, to use PCIe improving performances compared to standard SAS/SATA/FC access.
Mellanox switches to accelerate network up to 40Gb/s and improve communication between the 3 hosts that constitute the hyper-converged infrastructure
x86 industry standard server, based on Intel technology and powered by E4 to overcome SAN environment

A solution of this kind opens new perspectives for future scenarios as, by outstretching the performances of standards flash array storage, it can integrate Software Defined Storage on x86 industry standard server and be used to dramatically increase the consolidation of the most demanding workloads.

“We are very pleased to widen our expertise whenever we find technology partners such as HGST and VMware that are willing to experiment on innovation and enable us to create new advanced solutions that may add value to the industry. As a company, we are convinced that the future of data center is tending towards software defined and that the future of disk for most demanding applications is going to be SSD on NVMe” said Cosimo Gianfreda, CTO, E4 Computer Engineering.

“At HGST we are delighted to partner with a forward thinking company like E4. Working together we look forward to supporting the development of high-performance VSAN solutions, leveraging our NVMe PCIe technology.” – said David Villa, sales director, SSD and active archive, HGST. “HGST’s NVMe PCIe brings easy integration, single digital microsecond latency and high IO/s, which are essential for technology designed for performance-hungry virtualized environments like VSAN.“

“We are pleased that E4 Computer Engineering have developed an innovative hyper-converged architecture using VMware Virtual SAN technology,” said Alberto Bullani, regional manager, VMware Italy. “VMware Virtual SAN delivers enterprise storage services for virtualized production environments along with predictable scalability and all-flash performance“.