Valence brings storage virtualisation for the cloud era

Startup 22dot6 launches Valence, tool-outlined storage that throws a virtualisation layer over any backend storage by capability of a pair of nodes that split metadata and storage companies

Antony Adshead

Antony Adshead,
Storage Editor

Published: 25 Might fair 2021 16: 45

Startup 22dot6 has launched its Valence storage virtualisation platform, with bold claims that it is going to transcend all existing third-party storage to provide a single look of all an organisation’s records on any media, from excessive-performance flash storage to Glacier-admire chilly storage in the cloud and even off-line tape.

The start centres on 22dot6’s tool-outlined Transcendent Abstracted Storage Machine (Tass) architecture and its Valence tool. The claim is that Valence permits enterprises to accumulate admission to, switch and put together records resources transparently no matter the storage helpful resource on which they dwell, admire a storage virtualisation product.

Valence is multi-protocol (SMB, NFS, S3) accumulate admission to and additionally provides evolved storage companies alongside side snapshots, replication, migration and cloning. It has CSI drivers to provide power storage for containers.

Valence is a Linux-based totally totally tool product that can maybe per chance maybe additionally also be deployed on bare metal or in a virtual machine atmosphere. Key advantages cited are the flexibility to accumulate admission to kept records in any space to provide increased availability, by unifying an organisation’s infrastructure globally and to allow for zero-influence migration and decommissioning.

The product appears to be like to be to be like remarkably admire the storage virtualisation merchandise that were long-established around a decade in the past. Examples that are calm in existence are IBM’s Spectrum Virtualise (formerly SAN Quantity Controller) and DataCore SANSymphony. 22dot6 would claim its merchandise plod procedure past these in skill, with the addition of the flexibility to abstract cloud and offline records sources too.

Valence comes as two assorted kinds of node that address metadata from the kept records (VSR nodes) and records companies (DSX nodes) whereas the records stays on the unique storage. VSR and DSX might per chance maybe per chance maybe additionally also be constructed into clusters of a pair of nodes in an architecture that CEO Diamond Lauffin – formerly of Storbyte and Nexsan – mentioned provides substantial performance advantages over existing storage array merchandise.

“Glance at Pure and Nimble. The postulate of active-active twin controllers is a 1998 architecture,” mentioned Lauffin. “It’s successfully active-passive, on legend of it handiest permits you to make employ of one controller at a time. And in fact, when did a RAID controller ultimate fail? I issue to about 75 companies a week and I’ve no longer heard of any that had this occur to them in the final word 5 years. Why be restricted by two-controller accumulate admission to where the user can’t employ 50% of the throughput?”

Valence provides a single world namespace with “file-granular skill”. Derive admission to isn’t restricted to volumes or LUNs and is based totally totally on user-outlined insurance policies that aggregate backend storage into tiers based totally totally on performance and capability requirements.

Nodes might per chance maybe per chance maybe additionally also be user-chosen commodity hardware or pre-configured by 22dot6. Pricing depends upon on the class of storage and capability. “There would be a delta of 5x to 10x between essentially the most and least performant storage,” mentioned Lauffin.

In the Tass schema all sites might per chance maybe per chance maybe additionally also be knowing about as active sites, sharing records in real time to any assorted space, and all sites can act as a major space.

Essentially based on Lauffin the scale-up and scale-out nature of the architecture permits for throughput of as a lot as 1,200GBps with as a lot as 60 nodes per space.

Valence helps off-line records administration for archives admire Amazon Glacier and tape.

Tass separates metadata administration, records analytics/profiling and records companies from the processes of providing IOPS and managing throughput. Valence assigns these assorted projects to devoted CPU and RAM sources staunch through assorted nodes. Valence monitors performance in real time with predictive prognosis and reporting to make certain user outlined objectives – alongside side read/write bandwidth, IOPS, and latency.

Files safety might per chance maybe per chance maybe additionally also be configured at an application, user and sub-file level. In the intervening time, Valence might per chance maybe per chance maybe additionally also be configured for multi-tenancy with doubtlessly hundreds of self sustaining potentialities or interior departments isolated from every assorted through a unified, multi-space administration console.

Allege Continues Below