Scale Computing has published 'unprecedented results' in hyperconverged virtual machine IO performance using NVM express (NVMe). The lab tests have achieved mean IO latencies as low as 20 microseconds delivered to a guest virtual machine. The unique architecture of Scale’s software defined storage engine (SCRIBE) coupled with highly responsive NVMe drives enables this extraordinary performance.
In the coming months, Scale Computing will be introducing HyperCore-Direct, a new NVMe optimised hyperconverged solution for data intensive environments and customised hardware and network configurations. With the low latency of SCRIBE, HyperCore-Direct and NVMe, Scale Computing will provide optimal performance for both data intensive and legacy workloads.
Legacy software, still in use with many organisations, is not optimised for modern, multi-core CPUs, while new data intensive applications require massive amounts of processing that can waste valuable time. Improving the performance of both of these types of workloads can be challenging, and extremely low storage latency can provide a huge advantage.
“Scale’s HC3 product suite has long been a leader in the hyperconverged infrastructure space,” said Phil White, chief technology officer of Scale Computing. “We now continue that leadership by demonstrating the first hyperconverged solution to include NVMe support for maximum performance combined with the availability and scalability that HC3 is known for.”
Testing of HyperCore-Direct has shown that applications running within virtual machines can expect near bare-metal NVMe IO performance from mirrored, highly-available software-defined storage. An example four-node HyperCore-Direct configuration with 100 per cent NAND-based media is able to provide mean IO latencies of 150 microseconds on a mixed (90 per cent read / 10 per cent write) random workload to 24 virtual machines (at a total 240,000 IOPS). When more responsive media is utilised, the same workload achieves mean latencies of 65 microseconds. The four-node NAND-based system has also demonstrated over 2.6M IOPS with under 290 microseconds mean latency as delivered to a virtualised benchmark application.
“Scale Computing’s new HyperCore-Direct solution brings the ultra-low latency performance of NVMe to the masses,” said Howard Marks, chief scientist at DeepStorage, LLC. “Less than a year ago users requiring the sub-500µs latency and low overhead NVMe promised were limited to NVMe SSDs in servers or leading-edge Tier-0 systems that had no data services. Scale’s now delivering that performance on a hyperconverged platform with snapshots, and the other services enterprise applications require.”
“Scale Computing’s solution using Intel® Optane™ SSD P4800X is approaching the 10µs or lower bare metal latency for classic virtualisation,” said Frank Ober, Intel® Optane™ technology solution architect.
