NVMe-based Software-Defined Storage 'for dense performance at the edge'
SoftIron has announced its newest Ceph-optimised, software-defined storage appliance family, HyperDrive Performance+. Leveraging the AMD EPYC 3000 processor, the new Performance+ family debuts the company’s first x86 CPU and NVMe SSD-based designs to be introduced in its HyperDrive series of storage appliances.
With the initial appliances in the HyperDrive Performance+ family (Models HD61026 and HD61052), SoftIron is targeting edge computing deployments, where high-performance, low latency operation is needed in situations where space, power, and cooling are challenges. The new appliances are ideal in use cases where powerful and efficient compact clusters are desired in order to ingest data as quickly and cost-effectively as possible. These include applications such as media and entertainment content delivery, CGI rendering, tier one research computing, fintech applications, and AI training.
HyperDrive Performance+ appliances consume less than 250W of power each and provide line-rate throughput with 25GbE network connectivity, providing an ideal balance of performance and power for edge and remote workloads. Used in conjunction with other members of the HyperDrive family, and capitalising on the automatic tiering capabilities of Ceph, Performance+ appliances are also an ideal solution in larger storage infrastructures for the provision of a high performance caching tier over less powerful, but more cost-effective spinning disk-based deployments.
"SoftIron has always been oriented towards providing the best performance value for challenging computing environments. Recent events have accelerated the need for solutions optimised around this value-proposition, as the COVID-19 pandemic changes the way both edge and even traditional data centre solutions are being implemented," said Phil Straw, CEO of SoftIron. "Our customers are increasingly telling us that they need to build cost-effective edge computing deployments that deliver efficient, resilient, performance that require as little specialised support as possible. SoftIron is committed to engineering solutions for the issues that organisations are facing today as they push computing into places that were previously unthinkable. We are the leaders in delivering the scalability and reliability that mission-critical applications require, while freeing our customers from the vendor lock-in challenges of proprietary solutions."
The HyperDrive Performance+ family continues SoftIron's commitment to right-sizing data center appliances to provide powerful, flexible, and durable software-defined storage in a highly efficient form factor. As with all of SoftIron storage appliances, the HyperDrive Performance+ models are uniquely engineered to maximise the operation of Ceph by eliminating I/O bottlenecks and hardware waste common in storage solutions that use commercial off-the-shelf (commodity) hardware.
