Excelero's New NVEdge Software Allows Smaller NVMe Arrays for Customers

By Todd R. Weiss

Excelero has unveiled its new NVEdge block storage software that will allow OEMs, system integrators and others to build and offer storage systems for business customers who need NVMe high performance in smaller packages for smaller scale tasks such as edge computing.

Like its earlier large scale Excelero NVMesh block storage software, NVEdge offers low latency, super-fast performance in an NVMe all-flash array while allowing the use of smaller, two-node boxes compared to the three nodes or more required by NVMesh software.

Excelero’s Lior Gal

The NVEdge software can only be purchased as part of a pre-built storage appliance or system from an OEM or system integrator partner and cannot be purchased by itself, Lior Gal, the CEO and co-founder of Excelero, told Channel Partners.

NVEdge can be installed by OEMs and integrators to build all-flash array block storage systems and appliances using commodity hardware, giving business customers more flexibility in how they configure and use their high-performance storage systems, said Gal. Using NVEdge, NVMe arrays have been built and tested to deliver more than 2.7M 4K IOPs on a 100Gb link, according to the company.

Excelero NVEdge is block storage software targeted for cloud data centers and for deployments requiring a high availability NVMe storage array with local NVMe performance, but without the need for the massive scale made possible with the use of NVMesh.

The idea for NVEdge was to build a product with the DNA of NVMesh for a high performance business market that required the same performance on a smaller scale, said Gal. “This was designed for smaller deployments, for smaller data centers, for smaller requirements than the larger applications provided by NVMesh.”

The ability to run the software on commodity hardware is a large differentiator for Excelero’s all-flash storage software, he added.

Western Digital’s Stefaan Vervaet

Stefaan Vervaet, the senior director of solutions and alliances in the data center systems unit at Western Digital, said the new application will give the channel more opportunities with selling flash storage because they can now build systems for use with smaller scale IT needs compared to the NVMesh product.

Western Digital does not resell Excelero products but certifies and creates reference architectures for use with Western Digital drives and other hardware that are then built and sold by OEMs and partners or offered as a service, said Vervaet.

“What Excelero did first was go after the scale-out accounts, the large scale systems with NVMesh for large use cases,” he said. “With NVEdge, this one is really within the box, supporting a two-node cluster and is for smaller needs that won’t need to go beyond two servers. It can be all ready and built within one box.”

Another channel partner, Joe Lipman, the co-founder and a senior sales engineer at Advanced HPC, a solution provider that works with Excelero, said the new NVEdge option offers a turnkey solution for customers that value simplicity.

“NVEdge is easy to understand and easy to deploy,” said Lipman. “It’s the first iteration of the traditional, scale-up SAN that delivers the…

…performance long promised by NVMe.”

For Advanced HPC and other channel partners, “NVEdge opens up a new revenue stream for edge computing and traditional all flash array replacement,” he said. “Our customers rely on us to evaluate and recommend next-generation technologies that solve real problems. Excelero’s solutions allow them to deliver extreme performance in the data center or at the edge.”

Tim Stammers, a storage analyst with 451 Research, said that Excelero has been able to build its NVMe software and provide high performance by starting from scratch and giving users the ability to run it on commodity hardware.

“The new NVEdge is a version of the original NVMesh software but is designed for edge computing, edge as in IoT, for things that can be located anywhere,” said Stammers. “It’s not for stuff in the core data center, but at some location where the IoT data is being generated. At the edge you need some very fast processing to process your IoT data and that is going to need fast storage.”