SC19: Liqid and WD Collaborate to Deliver Managed NVMe-oF Open Composable Platform for Shared Accelerated Storage

Liqid, Inc. announced its collaboration with Western Digital Corp. to demonstrate NVMe-oF), leveraging the company’s software to manage the OpenFlex open composable platform across low-latency Ethernet fabrics.

The firm’s Command Center 2.2 software also composes the OpenFlex platform in tandem with GPU and CPU resources up and down the hardware rack and across multiple racks for multi-petabyte storage capacity at NVMe speeds. By enabling IT users to aggregate and share large pools of data center resources over distance, while also allowing for more granular resource management and automation at the stack level, Western Digital and Liqid are showcasing an expansive, multi-fabric composable system designed to dynamically maximize resource utilization and performance wherever physical hardware resides.

“Our OpenFlex composable platform is purpose-built for disaggregated deployment in the world’s most data-intensive environments that require agile, optimized storage performance for diverse and unpredictable workflows,” said Scott Hamilton, senior director, product management, data center business unit, Western Digital. “Liqid’s Command Center software leverages Western Digital’s Open Composable API to orchestrate OpenFlex platform resources enabling faster NVMe-oF deployments and further expanding the scope of composable resources. With OpenFlex and Liqid, IT users can create more precisely balanced, disaggregated systems that can scale to meet evolving business requirements.“

OpenFlex appliance

OpenFlex and Command Center 2.2 deliver value
OpenFlex E3000 and F3100 Series allows storage to be disaggregated from compute, enabling applications to share a common pool of NVMe storage capacity. Data can be shared between applications, or needed capacity can be allocated to an application regardless of physical location combining multiple, modular OpenFlex storage fabric devices in a single rack or across multiple enclosures.

OpenFlex E3000 and F3100 series devices feature:

Access to data from anywhere in the data center via ultra-low latency NVMe-oF
Up to 61.4TB capacity per device, each featuring dual-port 50GbE fabric connections
Up to 10 F3100 devices per E3000 enclosure
NVMe performance delivering up to 110GB/s and 22 million IO/s per OpenFlex E3000 enclosure
Deliver the data locality benefits of direct-attached NVMe (low latency, high performance) with the agility and flexibility of composable storage
Hot-swappable power supplies, fans, and fabric devices ensure availability without operational interruption

Command Center 2.2 composable software is integrated with Western Digital’s Open Composability API to enable manageability and automation of the appliance enclosure, including data volume management, sensor monitoring, power usage, fan speeds, and other critical activities. Compose for resources inside the appliance, and connect multiple OpenFlex-based racks together with Liqid software, sharing connected devices across the data center, and creating multiple petabytes of dynamic, pooled and managed OpenFlex-driven storage.

“By coupling Liqid’s award-winning, multi-fabric software with the powerful OpenFlex platform from Western Digital, we deliver fully composable NVMe-oF, with a disaggregated system built from the ground up for adaptive performance associated with artificial intelligence and other data-intensive applications,” said Marius Tudor, VP, sales and marketing, Liqid. “In addition, Liqid Command Center 2.2 enables IT users to connect the OpenFlex platform with additional disaggregated hardware such as FPGA, NVMe, and Intel Optane memory technology, for applications that can benefit from GPU-oF performance to deliver industry-leading, dynamic, highly scalable data center environments.”

The company’s Command Center delivers unified multi-fabric support for composability across all major fabric types including PCIe Gen 3, PCIe Gen 4, Ethernet, IB, and lays the foundation for the upcoming Gen-Z and CXL specs. The firm’s upcoming release of its Command Center 2.2 software will enable IT users to dynamically compose servers from pools of CPU, GPU, FPGA, NVMe, Intel Optane memory technology, and networking, regardless of underlying fabric type.

Read also:
$28 Million Series B Funding for Liqid, Total at $50 Million
Doubled Q/Q revenue with record profit.
November 14, 2019 | Press Release
FMS: From Liqid, Element LQD4500 PCIe Add-In-Card NVMe Up to 32TB
Up to 4 million IO/s of random performance, more than 24GB/s throughput, and transactional latency of 20µs
August 14, 2019 | Press Release
FMS: WD OpenFlex NVMe-oF Storage Platform With OpenFlex F3100 Fabric Device, OpenFlex E3000 Fabric Enclosure, and Composability API
Up to 61TB, 2.1 million IO/s, 11.7GB/s throughput, and latencies less than 48μs for F3100, and up to 7.2 million IO/s per rack unit and 39GB/s/RU with raw capacity density of 205TB/RU for E3000
August 12, 2019 | Press Release