KubeCon+CloudNativeCon: Kioxia KumoScale Software Brings Faster NVMe-oF Storage to Containers

Kioxia America, Inc. introduced a set of capabilities in its KumoScale storage software.

These features bring the functionality and durability of networked storage to applications managed by the Kubernetes framework, while delivering the performance of NVMe flash.

KumoScale software can serve as a container host, providing managed NVMe volumes to storage applications such as distributed file systems and object stores, running locally on KumoScale storage nodes.

Additionally, these capabilities and applications, along with other KumoScale control-plane services, are deployed and managed via a Kubernetes ‘micro-cluster’.

This results in a flexible infrastructure that can serve block, file, and object storage simultaneously to Kubernetes, OpenStack, and bare metal clients. The company demonstrated KumoScale software’s Kubernetes storage features at the virtual KubeCon + CloudNativeCon North America 2020 from November 17-20.

“Data center customers using the Kubernetes framework for infrastructure management don’t want to compromise storage performance in their cloud deployments, and we are committed to helping them maximize flash and compute resources,” said Joel Dedrick, VP and GM, networked storage software, Kioxia America. “With support for the Kubernetes framework, KumoScale software accelerates performance and improves utilization of NVMe-oF storage well beyond the usual container storage solutions. KumoScale features enrich Kubernetes storage technology with one of the most robust NVMe flash as a service solutions available today.”

Designed to improve the performance of client, server and storage systems, the NVMe-oF spec is driving new performance levels for cloud and enterprise applications. KumoScale software’s features integrated with the Kubernetes framework take advantage of the faster connections offered by NVMe-oF, enabling cloud deployments to serve more users per storage node – and improving operational costs. For example, KumoScale software-enabled storage recently demonstrated 20x faster read and write latencies, and 6x faster IO/s compared to Ceph.

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KumoScale software feature enhancements for Kubernetes framework include:

• Released KumoScale CSI Driver supports low latency core storage functions, data resiliency, snapshots, thin provisioning and live pod migration. KumoScale volumes simply appear to host containers as fast local NVMe drives. The driver is available in the Cloud-native Computing Foundation repository.

• KumoScale Management Cluster manages dozens or hundreds of storage nodes and continuously monitors and manages all of the services required for KumoScale software operation. These control services are containerized, and installed and managed by a private Kubernetes ‘micro-cluster’.

• Multi-tenant Virtual Clusters servicing multiple compute clusters supporting Kubernetes, OpenStack, and/or bare-metal can consume storage concurrently from a single physical KumoScale cluster. The KumoScale provisioner exposes a virtual cluster to each compute cluster, maintaining isolation and storage quotas for each cluster while enabling the storage pool to achieve high resource utilization.

• 3rd-party Application Hosting for Kubernetes Services enables KumoScale storage nodes to serve as a platform to host container-based storage interfaces, like file and object storage, that can take advantage of native NVMe performance. The KumoScale Management Cluster automatically installs and monitors these additional storage services.

In parallel with the release of these features, the company is offering a free two week trial of KumoScale software, hosted on the firm’s cloud infrastructure. Trial visit

Read also:
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