FMS: Israeli Telcon Bezeq Replaced AFA With Excelero NVMesh

Excelero Ltd, in software-defined block storage, announced that telecommunications company Bezeq The Israel Telecommunication Corp. is deploying itsced NVMesh as the centerpiece of a scale-out storage architecture behind its mission-critical data warehouse.

Replacing a high-end AFA with the simplicity and scale of an architecture using NVMesh along with Fujitsu servers and Mellanox 100GbE switches, Bezeq achieved a 2x to 3x throughput improvement and cut database run times by up to 90%.

As NVMe SSDs overtake traditional flash SSD sales in 2019, they are expected to grow into a $9 billion market by 2022, up from just $2 billion in 2017 (G2M Research, December 2018).

Bezeq’s results with Excelero typify the advantages that NVMe over Fabrics architectures deliver in superior throughput, ultra-low latency, scalability and flexibility.

Bezeq is a telecommunications provider in Israel, offering phone and internet services, smart devices, cybersecurity and cloud backup services. Its data warehouse holds over 118TB of vital data on sales, services, financial transactions, engineering device and customer interactions – data used to generate reports that help management streamline operations.

The data warehouse is also supporting an expansion into promising new lines of business such as HPC and hosted cloud services. Several years ago, Bezeq migrated from an Oracle Exadata system to a Hitachi UCP with internal Fusion IO and a Hitachi VSP F400 AFA connected via FC. But recently, the storage solution’s insufficient throughput, slow response times, and inability to be expanded led the IT team to seek a revamp.

“The Excelero NVMesh software-defined technology is the only technological solution that meets our performance demands and has proven to be an excellent decision,” said Igal Muginstein, storage and backup team manager, Bezeq. “As a leader in the national communications market, we are on the look-out for promising new technologies. NVMesh is a highly advanced solution and we have quickly seen the tangible benefits of replacing the complicated server with internal SSD and AFA with the simplicity and scale of Excelero NVMesh.“

The infrastructure incorporates Excelero NVMesh running on a Fujitsu RX4770 server, featuring 96 cores and 1TB memory, and Fujitsu RX2540 storage nodes with 4TB NVMe drives – totaling 48TB. The servers are connected with Mellanox 100GbE switches and NICs. A benefit of NVMesh was the flexibility to choose the most suitable and cost-effective commodity hardware for Bezeq’s requirements, eliminating vendor lock-in.

Early trials showed that in contrast to the maximum 8GB/s throughput of the Fusion IO devices, the NVMesh environment delivered 16-23GB/s – well above Bezeq’s requested 1 GB/s throughput. The Excelero storage also reduced run times by an average of 30% compared to the legacy AFA environment, and in some workloads, reduced run times up to 90%. Replacement was simple and while formal metrics weren’t established, Bezeq’s IT team detected reduced CPU demand, helping it squeeze maximum compute power from existing resources.

“Data warehouses are treasure troves of information that telcos need to stay ahead of the competition, but making them run efficiently can be a challenge,” said Hugo Georlette, CEO, BeLocal Ltd, an IT solutions provider in Herzilya which deployed Bezeq’s new storage architecture. “Excelero gives them a readily-extensible platform from which it can grow.“

“The winners in the new telecoms landscape will be those forward-thinking organizations that are most effective in extracting information from their data,” said Lior Gal, Excelero co-founder and CEO. “We are extremely proud that Excelero’s NVMesh is exceeding the requirements of Bezeq’s data warehouse and enabling the company to run its day-to-day operations with an important competitive edge.“

“For innovative and evolving telecom companies, choosing the right networking hardware becomes critical to achieving the fastest and most an efficient access to storage,” said Arik Kol, senior director ecosystem, Mellanox Technologies Ltd. “Deploying Excelero NVMesh together with Mellanox Spectrum Ethernet switches and ConnectX adapters enables customers like Bezeq to take full advantage of the benefits of NVMe flash, NVMe over Fabrics, and the Excelero NVMesh storage solution.“

Excelero will showcase the performance and efficiency of Bezeq’s deployment at the Flash Memory Summit 2019, August 4-8 in the Santa Clara Convention Center, CA.