Providers of storage systems are racing to be first to deliver platform systems based on Intel Xeon processors optimized for the Non-Volatile Memory Express (NVMe) interface developed by Intel. Tegile Systems this week announced its entry via an update to its IntelliFlash HD Flash storage platform that the company claims can store 30 percent more petabytes of data than any other platform at a fraction of the cost.
Narayan Venkat, chief marketing officer for Tegile, says processors optimized for NVMe will prove critical because processors for the first time will be able to keep pace with the speed of Flash drives. Most Flash drive capacity is wasted because the CPUs in the server can’t keep pace with the rate of I/O requests those drives can generate.
Rather than requiring IT organizations to invest in a forklift upgrade of their storage system, Venkat says, the update to IntelliFlash lowers costs by making it simpler to embrace NVMe using the same platform.
Unique capabilities provided with IntelliFlash HD, says Venkat, include the ability to prioritize I/O to provide predictable levels of performance across disparate classes of application workloads along with support for built-in data virtualization to accelerate movement of data between data sets. There are also tools for rapidly cloning data, while network virtualization capabilities serve to increase data availability.
Collectively, Venkat says, those capabilities will enable IT organizations to consolidate workloads on fewer NVMe systems.
“We expect to see a massive consolidation of workloads,” says Venkat.
It’s too early to definitively say whether NVMe will put the final nail in the magnetic disk coffin. But it’s becoming increasingly apparent that before too long, systems configured with all-Flash storage will dominate the data center landscape.
