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On Tuesday Micron Technology, Inc. introduced to us new NVMe SSDs for the enterprise market, however, that was just one of many announcements. They also announced the creation of Micron Accelerated Solutions, a set of purpose-built, scale-out solutions for open source and software-defined data centers. The first suite of Micron Accelerated Solutions are designed and developed in close collaboration with enterprising software and hardware companies including VMware, Supermicro and Nexenta.
Micron Accelerated Solutions were announced in conjunction with the opening of the Austin-based Micron Storage Solutions Center (MSSC). A hub for Micron storage innovation, the MSSC is also the engineering home for Micron Accelerated Solutions. Inside the MSSC lab, Micron works closely with customers to run their applications, optimize their workloads, and find ways to enhance their experience with Micron SSDs in their real-world environments. The MSSC is also where Micron leads its research in storage software and where Micron engineers are uncovering path to better architect storage software and operating systems to take full advantage of today’s flash technology. The company expects to regularly reveal news of future software innovations coming from the MSSC.
“Data center infrastructure needs new solutions,” said Mark Durcan chief executive officer of Micron Technology. “Solutions that are designed from the ground up using semiconductor technology—specifically flash storage today, as well as storage class memory in the future. We are proud to bring to our customers, and to Austin, a state-of-the-art center, products and solutions that provide IT departments with a way forward to build out an agile IT infrastructure.”
Introducing Micron Accelerated Solutions
Most of today’s data center hardware is based on frame-based arrays filled with bays of spinning media separated from compute. This traditional architecture is not capable of processing, analyzing and storing business critical data, especially at the volume, velocity and variety for which it is being created. For companies to truly realize the promise and potential of their data, they need an IT infrastructure that can handle the demands and challenges posed by large and continuous and complex data sets bring.
Micron, Supermicro and VMware have partnered to design all-flash Ready Nodes that pack the benefits of a fully integrated hyper-converged compute and storage solution. The Micron Virtual SAN AF-4, AF-6, and AF-8 Ready Nodes enable vSphere administrators to future-proof their data center architecture using all-flash, delivering compelling all-flash performance.
When compared to hybrid Virtual SAN implementations that include traditional HDD, the Micron Accelerated VMware Virtual SAN Ready Nodes offer up to 40x the IOPs and bandwidth, as well as low as 1/40th the latency.
The Micron Accelerated Virtual SAN Ready Nodes take full advantage of the advanced data efficiency features like deduplication, compression and erasure coding that are now available for the first time in Virtual SAN 6.2—key features that are only available in the all-flash configuration of the software-defined storage platform. As a result, the Virtual SAN All-Flash Ready Nodes can be purchased for as low as $0.44/GB (effective capacity) which includes the full MSRP of all server hardware, software and a three-year support.
Leveraging an open source object storage solution that runs on Linux software that hits 1M IOPS and reaches 140Gbps throughput, Micron has designed a robust, high-performance all-flash Ceph storage solution that allows customers to stand up a dynamic cloud infrastructure.
Based on Supermicro servers, the Micron Accelerated Ceph Storage Solution provides a solid foundation for large private clouds, helping businesses deal with the explosive data demands that are fueled by big data applications and by pervasive mobile devices. For more information on the Micron Accelerated Ceph Storage Solution, read the solution brief.
Micron is collaborating with Nexenta to design and optimize an all-flash, scale-out software-defined storage solution. The Micron Accelerated NexentaEdge Solution, currently a Proof of Concept (PoC), is designed to deliver high-performance Block (iSCSI & Cinder) and Object (Swift & S3) storage services that offers a scale-out, open source cluster for OpenStack cloud computing, virtualized infrastructures and container architectures.
The Micron Accelerated NexentaEdge Solution delivers cluster-wide inline deduplication and compression, providing customers with the added benefit of up to eight times greater usable capacity compared to raw capacity. The solution also delivers real-time self-balancing and unlimited instant snapshots and clones, important features for disaster recovery, providing customers with peace of mind in the event of data loss. This collaboration is expected to result in a joint reference architecture and purchasable solution from Supermicro in the fall of 2016.
SOLID Ready
Micron Accelerated Solutions have received the SOLID Ready seal, providing customers with confidence in deploying a solution that has been architected, optimized and tuned from the storage core to the application level. The SOLID Ready seal simplifies and accelerates the transition to an agile infrastructure by providing tested and proven reference architectures for next-generation enterprise and hyperscale applications including software defined storage platforms, virtualized workload infrastructures, OpenStack solutions and big data environments. The SOLID Ready seal is bestowed upon industry leading solutions that have been evaluated and developed by engineering teams from Micron and our partners to deliver SOLID performance. For more information the core tenets of the SOLID Ready seal, visit: www.micron.com/solid-ready.