NVMe-oF is ready for the enterprise

NVMe is considered one of the most disruptive innovations in the storage industry since flash storage, as it promises to reduce latency and increase performance far beyond existing SAS-based flash systems. NVMe-oF extends that performance boost over current storage infrastructures. However, until now, NVMe-oF faced challenges to widespread adoption in the enterprise sector with limited product availability and uncertainty with respect to the actual benefits. Enterprise IT leaders have been facing challenging decisions, including which workloads will benefit the most, how to select the right products, and how to mitigate risk during migration due to the limited supporting ecosystem.  

 

At Dell Technologies World, Virtual Instruments, Dell EMC, Cisco and SANBlaze will demonstrate how the four companies have collaborated to eliminate these challenges to make NVMe-oF enterprise-ready. The demo will simulate an NVMe-based, workload-heavy enterprise environment, which will consist of the following technologies:

 

·       Virtual Instruments’ VirtualWisdom infrastructure monitoring and AIOps platform

·       Virtual Instruments’ WorkloadWisdom storage performance validation platform

·       Dell EMC PowerMax NVMe Data Storage

·       Cisco MDS 9100 Series 32Gb Multilayer Fabric Switches

·       Cisco SAN Analytics and SAN Telemetry Streaming

·       SANBlaze VirtuaLUN Storage Emulation

 

The environment will feature Cisco’s MDS switches, which are sold and serviced by Dell EMC under the Connectrix MDS brand, connected to Dell EMC PowerMax arrays, with the massive simulated load generated by the combination of Virtual Instruments’ WorkloadWisdom storage workload modeling and analytics, integrated with the SANBlaze VirtuaLUN load generator. The entire environment will be monitored from end-to-end by Virtual Instruments’ VirtualWisdom, which will showcase new agentless integrations to Cisco SAN Telemetry Streaming (NVMe-oF), and Dell EMC NVMe-oF PowerMax that collect, monitor, correlate and analyse from the application servers, to the PowerMax. Cisco SAN Telemetry Streaming provides on-switch, in-band monitoring of NVMe-oF I/O storage traffic.

 

By showcasing superior NVMe-oF performance for the enterprise in a fully tested and monitored environment, the expansive demo will illustrate how the integrated ecosystem of Virtual Instruments, Dell EMC, Cisco and SANBlaze is making NVMe-oF viable for enterprise data centres. For example, the latest Cisco 32Gb MDS switches support both Fibre Channel and NVMe running in the same chassis, along with SAN Telemetry Streaming (STS), enabling IT leaders to reduce the risk of migration to NVMe-based storage such as the latest Dell EMC PowerMax arrays. As a result, the four companies are poised to help accelerate the adoption of NVMe in the enterprise for high-performance mission-critical applications.

 

In addition to Virtual Instruments’ integral role in the multi-company demo at Dell Technologies World, Virtual Instruments will have a major presence at the event.  

 

At Virtual Instruments’ booth (#501), there will be interactive demos of VirtualWisdom and WorkloadWisdom, as well as a showcase of Virtual Instruments’ highly regarded professional services, including the Cloud Migration Readiness service and the Infrastructure Performance Assessment service. In addition, one of Virtual Instruments’ healthcare customers, Houston Methodist, will lead a presentation focused on best practices around infrastructure management for mission-critical applications. Following are details on the session:

 

·       What: Best Practices for Infrastructure Management for Mission-Critical Apps

·       Where:

o   Room: Zeno 4702

o   Dell Technologies World

o   The Venetian

o   3355 S Las Vegas Blvd

o   Las Vegas, NV 89109

·       When:  Wednesday 1st May from 12 noon to 1pm

·       Who: Trey Jones, director of IT infrastructure services, Houston Methodist