Mellanox and Micron Smash 1Tb/s Storage Performance With Windows Server 2016

Mellanox Technologies, Ltd. announced a Windows Server 2016 storage solution that delivers 1.2Tb/s data communication bandwidth, maximizing cloud infrastructure performance at the lowest possible cost.

Mellanox ConnectX-4 RoCE

This solution eliminates the traditional bottlenecks associated with software-defined data center deployments, while enabling all enterprise applications to run over Windows Server 2016 with efficiency.

The performance was achieved on a twelve node cluster including: HP ProLiant DL380 Gen9 servers, Micron Technology, Inc.‘s NVMe, and the Mellanox ConnectX-4 RoCE (RDMA over Converged Ethernet) NICs, all connected by the company’s Spectrum switch and LinkX cables. This setup delivers performance utilizing the full 100GbE bandwidth between applications and server-based storage.

Storage Spaces Direct enables building highly available and scalable storage systems with local storage, unlocking performance NVMe SSDs and low-cost SATA SSDs and eliminates the requirement for shared storage enclosures. The high-performance SMB Direct protocol is used for inter-node communication over the Storage Spaces Direct software storage bus.

The firm networking solution includes the Spectrum switch, ConnectX-4 NICs and LinkX copper and optical cables, and support for Windows Server 2016 with Ethernet networks operating at speeds of up to 100Gb/s. This enables the compute and storage traffic to run over a single wire. It also improves the ROI of hyperconverged infrastructure and enables multi-core CPUs to achieve their full capacity to run applications.

“Mellanox has been instrumental in taking cloud efficiency to the next level,” said Motti Beck, senior director, enterprise market development, Mellanox. “Our RDMA technology has been embraced by the industry for its ability to provide hyperconverged systems with similar functionality compared to the traditional SAN-based architecture but with higher performance and improved TCO.“

“Customers are constantly looking for improved infrastructure for today’s network intense applications,” said Tim Peters, VP and GM, ProLiant rack and tower and SMB solutions, Hewlett Packard Enterprise Development LP. “HPE’s ProLiant DL380 platform with the Mellanox Ethernet card, RoCEv2 implementation and Windows 2016 Storage Spaces Direct will provide unprecedented speed for customers looking to deploy network-intense applications like media streaming and compute clustering.“

“High-speed storage in hyperconverged solutions is critical to capitalizing on the performance benefits of NVMe SSDs,” said Eric Endebrock, VP, marketing, storage solutions, Micron Technology, Inc. “Micron, Mellanox, and Microsoft are putting into the hands of our customers the power of NVMe, with cost efficient SATA SSDs, to eliminate the need for more expensive SAN solutions. Customers who need the extreme performance of an all NVMe SSD storage tier can now leverage this kind of performance for their real-world workloads.“

Siddhartha Roy, manager, principal group program, Microsoft Corp., said: “IT managers need the most efficient hyperconverged data center solution that will enable them to meet the industry’s most demanding application performance while maintaining the lowest possible costs. Using HPE servers, equipped with Micron NVMe SSDs and Mellanox’s end-to-end RoCE networking, has enabled us to achieve performance of 1.2Tb/s data communication bandwidth between the applications to storage, while preserving the low deployment cost.“

Resources:
ConnectX-4 10/25/40/50/100 GbE RoCE capable Adapters
ConnectX-4 Lx 10/25/40/50 GbE RoCE-capable Adapters
RoCE web page
IBTA RoCE Initiative
ZeroPacketLoss switches
IBTA RoCE Initiative