Western Digital Enhanced OpenFlex Data24 Platform Powered by New RapidFlex Fabric Bridge Device and Ultrastar Dual-Port NVMe SSDs

From the cloud, to the edge, to the enterprise, data center architects are deploying higher levels of flash to unlock the potential of AI, object storage, file sharing and more.

At the same time, they are laser-focused on controlling spend and must find solutions to help them manage, scale and utilize storage assets more efficiently. This is driving a growing trend to disaggregate and share NVMe-oF for improved performance, availability and flexibility of storage resources.

Helping customers simplify NVMe/NVMe-oF storage deployment, Western Digital Corp. announced its enhanced OpenFlex Data24 3200 NVMe-oF JBOF/Storage platform along with the next-gen RapidFlex A2000 and C2000 NVMe-oF fabric bridge devices (FBDs), and the Ultrastar DC SN655 PCIe Gen 4.0 dual-port NVMe SSD. These storage solutions are enabling an ecosystem, providing more flexibility and choice for simplifying NVMe and NVMe-oF deployment for customers. The firm is now the only company with vertical integration capabilities targeting both ends of the Ethernet wire to deliver solutions where data travels from the server initiator to the storage target.

“NVMe-oF is poised to revolutionize modern data center infrastructure as it can unlock the performance of NVMe SSDs while efficiently sharing and scaling flash across multiple servers and applications,” said Randy Kerns, senior strategist, The Futurum Group. “Western Digital continues to drive ecosystem growth and open standards with its expanding portfolio of NVMe-oF solutions, which puts the company in an excellent position to continue to drive adoption across a broad spectrum of uses.”

Fully integrated OpenFlex Data24 3200 NVMe-oF storage platform
The company’s OpenFlex Data24 3200 is an integrated NVMe-oF storage platform that extends the performance of NVMe flash to a shared storage architecture. By separating storage resources from compute, and sharing it over Ethernet, it becomes widely available to multiple applications and servers, allowing for greater resource control and scalability, leading to improved storage utilization without overprovisioning.

Using RapidFlex FBDs, the Data24 3200 allows up to 6 hosts to be attached without a switch. A switched environment allows scaling even more hosts and Data24 platforms, providing scale-out or scale-up capabilities from hundreds of terabytes to petabytes of NVMe flash with very low application latency. In addition to RDMA over converged Ethernet (RoCE), the Data24 now features new TCP connection support. Available in a 2U 24-bay platform and backed with a 5-year limited warranty, the Data24 3200 is built to deliver low power, high availability and enterprise-class reliability with up to 368TB ⁽¹⁾ in a single platform of low-latency dual-port PCIe Gen 4.0 SSDs.

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Next-Gen RapidFlex FBDs: A2000 ASIC and the C2000 Fabric Bridge PCIe adapter card

A2000 RapidFlex NVMe-oF controller

The RapidFlex family of NVMe over fabric bridge devices provide the foundational building blocks for OEMs/ODMs and large organizations taking a DIY approach to their software-defined infrastructure to enable next-gen workloads based on highly scalable shared storage across an Ethernet fabric. These 2nd-gen low-power, high-performance FBDs come in 2 versions: the RapidFlex A2000 controller, and the RapidFlex C2000 that places the A2000 chip on a PCI adapter for powering solutions like the OpenFlex Data24.

RapidFlex C200 NVMe-oF controller

The RapidFlex FBD is a state machine that exports the PCI bus over Ethernet, allowing externally connected SSDs to appear as if they were local to the server. The new family also doubles performance with an additional 100GbE port (2x100Gb/s Ethernet ports) matched to 16 lanes of PCIe Gen 4.0, and provides a PCIe root complex within all NVMe all-flash arrays, making it to qualify and deploy. The A2000 and C2000 FBDs add initiator mode capability to the existing target mode capability so customers can deploy more cost-effective and lower power initiator cards in their servers instead of a conventional Ethernet NIC for NVMe-oF connectivity.

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Enterprise-class Ultrastar DC SN655 dual-port NVMe SSD

The Ultrastar DC SN655 is a cost-effective, dual-port, high-capacity PCIe Gen 4.0 NVMe SSD designed for cloud, OEM and enterprise customers who need high-performance, high-capacity storage for a variety of applications and workloads such as disaggregated storage, object storage, storage servers and other mission-critical applications.

It is a vertically integrated SSD that provides a simple, scalable, single-port or dual-port path to ensure continuous data access for enterprise HA requirements. It also expands capacities from 3.84 to 15.36TB ⁽¹⁾ targeting both storage and mixed workload compute applications, and increases drive reliability to 2.5 million hours MTBF (projected). Additionally, the SN655 reaches more than one million maximum random read IO/s and enhanced QoS for large unstructured workloads.⁽²⁾ In comes in a drop-in U.3 15mm form factor and is U.2 backwards compatible. The SN655 also offers additional enterprise features like power-fail protection and end-to-end data path protection to ensure data is available when needed.

Ultrastar DC SN655 SSD specs
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“With NVMe disaggregated storage becoming the reality, along with the exponential growth of data, our goal is to provide data architects with reliable and trusted SSDs and simplified NVMe-oF solutions to help them future-proof their storage strategy and deliver uncompromised performance at scale to meet the ever-changing workload demands,” said Kurt Chan, VP and GM, platforms business. “When combining RapidFlex and Ultrastar into the Data24, Western Digital gives organizations a transformative, next-gen way to share flash and bring greater value to their business.”

The OpenFlex Data24 3200 NVMe-oF storage platform, the RapidFlex family of A2000 and C2000 FBDs, and the Ultrastar SN655 dual-port NVMe SSD are sampling.

⁽¹⁾ 1TB is equal to one trillion bytes. Actual user capacity may vary depending on the operating environment.
⁽²⁾ Based on internal testing. Performance will vary by capacity point, or with the changes in useable capacity. Consult product manual for further details. All performance measurements are in full sustained mode and are peak values. Subject to change.