Starline Computer Unveils Mars500 NVMe Ceph Storage Appliance from Ambedded Technology

Starline Computer GmbH, Ambedded Technology Co., Ltd. partner, launches the Mars500 NVMe Ceph Storage appliance.

Versatile in object, file and block profile: In addition to the Mars400 Ceph appliance – for the largest SATA capacities – Ambedded also launched the Mars500 NVMe node in October. The turnkey Ceph appliance solution simplifies deployment, operation, management, and monitoring of the storage cluster.

As specialists in the field of scalable, highly available and SDS solutions, the Ambedded developers dedicated themselves to the fast Ampere Altra Arm processors as well as the NVMe technology. They had this potent hardware combination orchestrated by the in-house Ceph Management Web GUI. The result was the brand UniVirStor Flash Mars500 Ceph Storage appliance.

Ambedded thus supplies the hardware, and also the software package from a single source: the UniVirStor software package includes a Linux OS, a Ceph instance and a Ceph management GUI (UVS Manager). This will enable Ambedded users to automate the provisioning, management, operation and maintenance of Ceph clusters.

The Mars500 Ceph appliance has a 32-core Ampere Altra Arm CPU, manages 8xU.3 NVMe SSDs and has 2x25GbE ports installed – 100GbE are also optionally available. The RAM size is 96GB with an option for a total of 4TB.

UniVirStor Flash Mars500 Ceph Storage appliance rear
Click to enlarge

UVS 3.0 – Manage Ceph even without command lines
For the product line, the developers have further developed the UVS Manager to version 3. It now has many new features that make it easier for administrators to monitor and manage the Ceph cluster through a graphical user interface (and automated processes). These include: a redesigned dashboard, host management, CRUSH map, RBD snapshot schedules, mirroring and multi-site object storage. Command line fans, however, can still use direct management via SSH client.

High-performance, scalable and sustainable Ceph cluster
Thanks to the economical Ampere Altra Arm technology, a server needs around 200W of power even under heavy workloads. These 1st gen multi-core processors based on 64-bit arms, was designed for large public and private cloud environments. Compared to x86 platforms, Mars models thus save energy costs without the operator having to accept performance losses. In addition, the Ampere Altra CPUs offers extensive RAS (Row Address Strobe) functions.

All-round solution for professionals
Starline Computer GmbH itself – as well as partner Ambedded – provide the consulting and technical support for the advanced Ceph appliances – professional service and necessary software updates included.

By the way, the models from Ambedded’s Ceph appliance product line also work hand in hand with each other: Mars400 and Mars500 can act as 2 standalone Ceph clusters or as a hybrid cluster. The Mars400’s hard disk pool then uses the Mars500’s NVMe SSD pool as a cache tier, for example.

Applications
Many companies choose Enterprise Ceph solutions primarily because of the price/performance ratio. Ambedded’s Ceph appliance also boasts high IO/s performance, scalability and reliability, and energy savings. In addition, by adding more nodes to the cluster, the administrator can increase both capacity and performance as needed. As such, it is recommended for cloud providers, in data centers, finance, research, academia, e-commerce applications, and the M&E industries.

Availability
Ambedded’s UniVirStor Flash Mars500 Ceph Storage appliance is expected to be available from the company in 1Q23.

Resource:
Mars500 NVMe Ceph Storage appliance specs