Storage Unpacked Podcast

This week, Chris and Martin talk to Howard Marks, Chief Storyteller at VAST Data.  You may know Howard as an independent analyst and author for a range of online publications.  Howard recently joined VAST to help explain and promote understanding of their data platform architecture.
The VAST Data platform uses three main technologies that have only recently emerged onto the market.  QLC NAND flash provides long-term, cheap and fast permanent storage.  3D-XPoint (branded as Intel Optane) is used to store metadata and new data before it is committed to flash.  NVMe over Fabrics provides the connectivity between stateless VAST front-end servers and JBOF disk shelves.
The architecture has some very subtle differentiated points that allow the solution to be scale-out and highly efficient.  The server components are stateless because metadata isn’t cached locally. That removes issues of cache coherency and keeping all metadata synchronised.  3D-XPoint allows data to be written as huge stripes with as little as 3% overhead on large systems.
If you want to learn more about the VAST platform, check out https://www.vastdata.com, read our blog on the VAST technology or visit the Tech Field Day website where you’ll find more in-depth videos from the founders of the company.
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Timeline

* 00:00:00 – Intros
* 00:02:00 – Who is Howard Marks?
* 00:02:30 – Who are VAST Data?
* 00:04:00 – Do we need hyper performance or good enough?
* 00:07:30 – Three technologies – QLC NAND & Optane
* 00:09:30 – Intelligent JBOFs
* 00:11:50 – Take a breather Howard!  Let’s review!
* 00:13:30 – Server components are stateless containers
* 00:14:50 – Shared nothing? No DASE – Shared Everything
* 00:17:40 – Why does Persistent Memory allow scale-out?
* 00:19:34 – Wide stripe optimisation with erasure coding
* 00:21:00 – Optimised deduplication with similarity hashing
* 00:24:00 – Wide stripes with sequential I/O improves endurance for flash
* 00:26:00 – It’s a log-based file system (not WAFL)
* 00:29:00 – 10 year guarantee on QLC drives

Transcript

 
Related Podcasts & Blogs

* VAST Data launches new scale-out storage platform
* QLC NAND – What can we expect from the technology?
* What are TBW & DWPD?

Howard’s Bio
Howard Marks is VAST Data’s Technologist Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary helping customers realize the advantages of Universal Storage. Before joining VAST Howard spent 40 years as an independent consultant and storage industry analyst at DeepStorage. He is a frequent, and highly rated speaker at industry events and Storage Field Day delegate.

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