Kioxia Sampling Ethernet Attached Storage Up to 7,68GB 2.5-Inch SSDs With NVMe-oF 1.1 and NVMe 1.4 Compliance

Kioxia America, Inc. is sampling Ethernet SSDs to select partners and customers interested in validating the benefits of Ethernet attached storage to their existing Ethernet (RoCEv2) networks.

It has been working in collaboration with key industry players Marvell Technology Group Ltd. , Foxconn-Ingrasys and Accton Technology Corp. to bring Ethernet Bunch of Flash (EBOF) technology solutions to market.

Marvell NVMeoF architecture

In an ongoing quest to contain explosive amounts of data, storage capacity and bandwidth must continue to grow while processing time must decrease. An EBOF system addresses these challenges through an Ethernet fabric that can scale flash and optimally disaggregate storage from compute. The EBOF storage solution bypasses the cost, complexity, and system limitations inherent with standard JBOF storage systems, which typically include a CPU, DRAM, HBA, and switch. This accelerates applications and workloads where disaggregated low-latency, high bandwidth, highly available storage is needed – bringing greatly improved performance and lower TCO to edge, enterprise and cloud data centers.

“We are thrilled to collaborate with Kioxia to enable the industry’s first native Ethernet NVMe-oF SSD with Marvell’s 88SN2400 controller,” said Thad Omura, VP, marketing, flash business unit, Marvell. “The native Ethernet SSD combined with our switches and controllers offer data centers an EBOF solution that lowers their TCO, increases performance and reduces power as compared to alternative JBOF solutions.“

EBOF system highlights:

Simpler design with Ethernet SSD connecting directly to the embedded Ethernet switch inside EBOF
Available EBOF 2U systems can connect up to 24 company’s Ethernet SSDs with up to total 600Gb/s storage throughput
Each system supports 2.4Tb/s of connectivity throughput which can be split between network connectivity and daisy chaining additional EBOFs
Performance: 670,000 IO/s per drive, over 16 million IO/s per 24 bay EBOF (@4KB random read)
Runs Marvell EBOF SDK, leveraging the SONiC network OS and enabling advanced discovery and management functions

The company’s drives incorporate the Marvell NVMe-oF Ethernet SSD converter controllers into its enterprise NVMeSSDs, bypassing the requirement for an external Ethernet to NVMe bridge adapter.

Ethernet SSD features:

Support for single or dual 25GbE and RoCEv2 RDMA connection
NVMe-oF 1.1 and NVMe 1.4 compliance
2.5-inch ⁽¹⁾ 15-mm Z-height form factor
Capacities supported: 1,920/3,840/7,680GB
2-die failure recovery and other reliability features
Support for Redfish and NVMe-MI storage management specs
Support for IPv4 and IPv6 architecture

“EBOF has great potential to be highly advantageous by enabling optimal storage disaggregation, eliminating costly CPU, DRAM, and AIC components,” said Benjamin Ting, SVP, Ingrasys. “By eliminating the bottleneck formed in traditional CPU-based storage architectures to unleash the performance of SSDs, EBOF holds the key to the future of data center and HPC storage.“

“Accton is pleased to collaborate with Kioxia to deliver this innovative EBOF solution,” noted Melody Chiang, SVP, product development and management, Accton. “Explosive data center bandwidth demands are driving the requirement for increased storage capacity and bandwidth with lower latency. This disaggregated EBOF solution will address performance challenges, decrease complexity, and lower TCO. We look forward to the widespread industry adoption of this Ethernet-based storage technology.“

“The Ethernet-attached storage ecosystem is an idea whose time has come,” noted Alvaro Toledo, VP, SSD marketing and product planning, Kioxia. “By collaborating with Marvell, Foxconn-Ingrasys and Accton to bring an EBOF system to market, we are enabling the true potential of NVMe over Fabrics. This opens up a new world of possibilities for cloud data center operators, SDS providers, and server and storage system OEMs.“

The company’s Ethernet drives are sampling to industry partners and customers.

⁽¹⁾ 2.5-inch indicates the form factor of the SSD. It does not indicate drive’s physical size.

Resource:
Marvell in Collaboration With Foxconn-Ingrasys, Accton and Kioxia to Accelerate End-to-End Ethernet Storage Adoption
EBOF to replace JBOF architecture by integrating Ethernet network interface directly into flash drive
March 9, 2020 | Press Release