Multi-protocol storage in NVMe-oF mode at Pavilion Data

“The 3rd wave of storage begins with the parallelization that arrived with NVMe,” Gurpreet Singh, CEO of the start-up Pavilion Data Systems, founded in 2014 and based in San Francisco, explained to us bluntly. “When 10 GbE arrived, some people asked what it could be used for and today it is no longer sufficient. We want to be sure that what we offer goes beyond customer expectations”. Precisely in the field of flash storage, Pavilion exceeds the usual configuration with two controllers on its NVMe-over-Fabrics bays (iSCSI, ROCE, RDMA or TCP). We have built a share performance memory platform with up to 20 independent controllers per 4U array with support for file, block or object modes.

The system-level partition allows controllers powered by PavilionOS to work together or independently to solve a particular problem like rebuilding a Raid volume faster,” the CEO said. Each controller is dynamically defined as a block, file, or object access controller, and a second controller acts as a standby backup. Plane control is done with an API first approach. Note that the object storage support goes through a Minio server, as with many other providers (Qumulo for example).

The Pavilion Data array supports data access in block, object and file (NFS) mode.

Up to 20 million random read IOPS

The start-up’s Hyperparallel Flash Array (HFA) offers, according to the leader, unparalleled performance and capacity thanks to NVMe-over-Fabrics. Based on NVMe SSDs in M.2 format and shared memory for metadata, Pavilion claims maximum performance of 20 million random read IOPS with five million writes. Claimed throughput tops out at 120 GB/s in and 90 GB/s in writes while latency drops to 100 µs read and 25 µs write to serve use cases like scientific and commercial HPC, or processing analytics with Splunk, Hadoop, and other data-intensive consumers that are adopting S3 object storage as the standard for next-generation workloads.

The proposal is to offer high performance in block, file, but also object mode. This is particularly attractive for companies that want their object storage to be close to where it is processed with analytical and AI/ML processes. “FC/SAN changed the storage industry like NVMe-oF does today. The combination of low latency and high performance is highly sought after today,” notes Casta Hasapopoulos, CFO of Pavilon Data.

Pavilion Data does not name its competitors but we find, in order from left to right: Dell-EMC, NetApp and Pure Storage. These figures should always be considered with the greatest caution when the test and material conditions are not known.

Pavilion Data employs nearly 80 people worldwide and offers its solutions in Europe through partnerships. In UK and Benelux only for now, there are no resellers in France yet, but discussions are ongoing. Among the young shoot’s clients, we can mention CBS in the United States and a bank in Great Britain.