Lightbits Labs Unveils Scalable Kubernetes Storage Solution for High Performance Block and AI Workloads with AMD

Lightbits Labs Ltd. published a reference architecture (RA) with AMD (Advanced Micro Devices, Inc.) for an industry’s first scalable, highly available, disaggregated, software-defined storage (SDS) solution that simplifies and accelerates Kubernetes infrastructure deployments.

This game-changing solution delivers unmatched price/performance value, enabling a seamless path to application containerization and modernization, while making it easier to manage and scale infrastructure for high-performance and AI workloads.

The RA is designed to leverage the combined power of Ceph and Lightbits storage, with AMD hardware, to ensure an efficient and scalable data platform optimized for general-purpose applications, as well as demanding AI and database applications in Kubernetes environments. A key advantage is the seamless integration of Lightbits block storage into existing Kubernetes deployments, without requiring significant re-architecting, which enables a smooth upgrade path to software-defined, high-performance block storage.

“Organizations with application containerization or modernization initiatives are sensitive to cost-efficiencies while needing scalable, highly performant storage solutions,” said Kam Eshghi, co-founder and chief strategy officer, Lightbits Labs. “Our reference architecture with AMD provides a fast, simple on-ramp to software-defined infrastructure for Kubernetes deployments, delivering superior performance for latency-sensitive workloads, without the need for additional costly changes to network architecture.”

Designed natively for NVMe over TCP, Lightbits software-defined storage redefines performance and efficiency for stateful applications in Kubernetes. The storage software scales to 100s of PBs and achieves up to 75M IOs/cluster with consistent sub-millisecond tail latency, making it for performance-intensive applications. Lightbits software running on AMD EPYC CPU-based servers yields a cost-efficient solution that radically simplifies storage management and accelerates business outcomes, making it easier to provision, manage, and scale high-performance, persistent storage for VMs. The system architecture can be easily scaled to support many Kubernetes worker nodes while maintaining linear performance.

Additional benefits of this solution include:

• Support for mixed general-purpose and high-performance workloads on a single storage solution
• Operational simplicity with the ability to provision and scale resources via the CSI plugin
• Sustainability through more efficient utilization of hardware resources, smaller data center footprint, and lower costs
• Versatility to support both containerized and virtualized (using KubeVirt) applications

“Modern cloud-native workloads demand performance, efficiency, and seamless scalability at every layer of the stack,” said Derek Dicker, corporate VP, enterprise and HPC business group, AMD. “By pairing AMD EPYC processors with Lightbits’ software-defined storage, customers gain exceptional compute and ultra-low-latency storage that can accelerate even the most data-intensive Kubernetes pipelines.”

To get started building a data platform for high-performance block workloads in Kubernetes environments, download the reference architecture available on the company’s website (registration required).

Resource:
WP: Software-Defined Storage for Private Clouds: How Lightbits Compares to Ceph Storage (registration required)