Kioxia KumoScale V.3.20 Storage Software Built Around NVMe-oF

Kioxia America, Inc. has released V.3.20 of its KumoScale storage software built around the NVMe-oF protocol.

Designed for cloud-centric deployment at data center scale, the KumoScale storage platform delivers performance NVMe flash storage as a disaggregated networked service. Major features in V.3.20 include additional bare metal deployment options, support for OpenID Connect 1.0, and support for Nvidia Magnum IO GPUDirect Storage (GDS).

Additional bare metal deployment options
In addition to the KumoScale software’s streamlined appliance install, the V.3.20 adds an option to deploy on generally available commercial OSs. Most large data centers deploy architectures that have very requirements for security, monitoring, telemetry and networking which requires that storage subsystems support OS customization to integrate into these environments. KumoScale software ‘managed mode’ enables flexibility for engineering and security administrators to configure, integrate and control the KumoScale software storage layer OS environment, while this software ‘appliance mode’ provides simpler installation and automated deployment with reduced deployment complexity for SMEs but with more limited OS configurability.

Nvidia Magnum IO GPUDirect Storage support
V.3.20 adds support for Nvidia GDS. GDS enables a direct data path for DMA transfers between GPU memory and storage, which avoids a bounce buffer through the CPU. This direct path increases system bandwidth and decreases the latency and utilization load on the CPU. KumoScale software behaves as a storage adapter to GDS.

Said Scott Nelson, SVP and CMO, said, “We are proud to work with Nvidia to deliver the power of NVMe technology into GPUDirect applications using the KumoScale software-defined platform to maximize the flexibility and cost-effectiveness of NVMe storage.”

“AI and other breakthrough cloud technologies have the potential to solve some of society’s most difficult challenges – and they’re transforming data center architectures,” said Rob Davis, VP, storage technology, Nvidia Corp. “Nvidia’s accelerated computing platform enables storage innovators such as Kioxia to equip customer data centers with the extreme performance required to tackle next-generation workloads.”

OpenID connect support
V.3.20 adds support for third-party OpenID Connect 1.0. This later is an identity layer on top of the OAuth 2.0 protocol that allows clients to verify the identity of users and sessions based on the authentication performed by an ‘Authorization Server’ for service account permissions. KumoScale software support for OpenID Connect simplifies security integration into CSP data center environments.

KumoScale software V.3.20 also includes CSI raw block support and an embedded Grafana storage analytics dashboard.