Vortex Express is built from the ground up with cutting edge PCI-E fabric technology to support RDMA and NVMeoF protocols providing you an end to end NVMe all flash solution. Give yourself a head start with the speed and performance that was previously only available for the fortune 500 companies, for a much lower cost.
The system delivers flexibility, elasticity, simplicity and resiliency at scale with high-end performance storage fabric. In addition to delivering high-performance block storage with rich data services, Vortex Express offers a comprehensive and easy to manage toolset for IT operations and lifecycle management. It is ready for automating all your infrastructure workflows.
Vortex Express is highly adaptable to your storage needs, as a unique product in a category of its own as it entirely relies on the PCI-E Fabric for all internal operations, including replication, cluster path mirroring, and various system operations with speeds of up to 128GBs and nanosecond latency.
Going from unleashing the power of up to 320 NVMe-disks, or expand your capacity with up to 2048 SAS-disks and still have 160 NVMe-disks available, on one controller, This makes it ideal for Ultra-Large databases, Forensic analysis, Medical and scientific research, intensive big data workloads, AI and deep learning systems, agile private cloud deployments, and datacenter consolidation.
The PCI-E Fabric allows the system to scale out with up to 320 NVME disks per node, allowing for up to 9.6 PB of ultra-low latency NVME storage.
Vortex express systems come in various flavors
Non Clustered storage targets
Single node stand-alone systems with a single storage controller (no HA)
Single node Active/Passive with two storage controllers (HA)
Clustered storage targets
two-node clustered systems with two storage controllers (metro Cluster)
two-node clustered systems with four storage controllers (HA metro cluster)
Vortex Express Base and Advanced Edition
Vortex Express Base Edition
Start to leverage the power of NVMe without breaking the bank. The Vortex Express BE supports up to a maximum of 32 U.2 NVMe disks in a compact 1U format.
Vortex Express Advanced Edition
The Advanced Edition is a 2U modular NVMe storage system that offers 24 internal SATA/SAS 2.5 inch bays. It is designed with large research institutes in mind, whether it’s governmental or commercial. This system supports up to 64 U.2 2.5 Inch NVMe disks natively and up to 320NVME disks using PCIE fabrics.
Vortex Express advanced Expansion options
NVMe expansion
Vortex Express is expandable with one UR32 NVMe expansion kit which allows the addition of 32 NVMe disks to the controller
Vortex Express Advanced Expansion
The Advanced expansion provides you with the ultimate in current storage-technologies. It comes with our unique PCIE Fabric Composer to allow the connection of 10 UR32 NVMe expansion kits for a total of 320 NVMe disks to the storage controller through the PCIE Fabric composer that offers 512GB/s of transfer speeds with nanosecond latency
SAS expansion
Vortex Express is expandable with any 2U SAS cabinet, supporting the SAS protocol. This can go up to a maximum of 1024 disks through cabinet cascading.
Using SAS expansion, you can still expand your NVMe Standard or Advanced Edition with the NVMe Advanced expansion, with up to 5 UR32 NVMe expansion kits for a total of 160 NVMe disks.
| Feature | Vfusion Vortex express | HPE Nimble Storage (HF Series) | NetApp FAS Series | Dell EMC SC Series | Pure Storage FlashArray//C |
| Footprint for 7.3PB effective | 7 1U rack units with 100% NVMe with 32 NVME units per shelf | 64 rack units (using 10TB 7k HDDs +3.8TB SSDs for cache) | 28 rack units (using 10TB 7k HDDs + PCIe FlashCache) | 30 rack units (using 10TB HDDs + 1.6TB & 3.8TB SAS SSDs for cache) | 9 rack units with 100% NVMe DFMs |
| Latency | Consistent 700NS-1ms latency; no cache misses, no hotspots, no worries | <1ms (cache hit) >5ms (cache miss) | 5ms–10+ms write latency; read latency dependent on read caching via FlashCache | <1ms (cache hit) >5ms (cache miss) | Consistent 2-4ms latency |
| End-to-End NVMe | PCIE Fabric | Not supported | Not supported | Not available | DirectFlash™️ |
| Flash Media | 7.6TB / 30TB Vfusion Flash modules Compatible with off the shelf Flash modules | Not supported | Not supported | Not available | Proprietary QLC DirectFlash™ modules |
| NVME High Availability | HA available via PCIE fabric | Not supported | Not supported | Not available | Not available |
| Multi-tier expandability | System supports 10 NVME shelves, and up to 2048 SAS disks within the same controller. | Only SAS based expansion | Only SAS based expansion | Only SAS based expansion | Only NVME based expansion |
| PCIE fabric | Used for all internal system operations including replication and data transfer | Not supported | Not supported | Not supported | Not supported |
| Networking support | Works with all industry standard Network, Fc and infiniband cards | Only manufacturer approved hardware | Only manufacturer approved hardware | Only manufacturer approved hardware | Only manufacturer approved hardware |
| All-inclusive Software Features | Vortex express comes standard with all features | Via Timeless | Not available | Not available | Not available |
| Full Performance Through Failure Or Upgrade | 100% | 100% | ~50% impact with controller failure per HA-pair | ~50% impact with controller failure per HA-pair | 100% |
| Protocol Support | NVMe-oF, NVME/TCP (RoCE),ISER, iSCSI, FC, SMB, NFS, Native NVME (on linux) | FC, iSCSI, SAS | FC, FCoE, iSCSI, NFS, pNFS, CIFS/SMB | FC, iSCSI | NVMe-oF (RoCE), iSCSI, FC, SMB, NFS |
| Contoller NDU | Lifetime data in place upgrade. Modular architecture allowing for true NDU with unique NVME HA Select HA models | Intra-chassis NDU, forklift between chassis | Via complicated aggregate relocation process, done by professional services | Not Supported | Free Every Three – via Evergreen Gold |
Benefits of adopting Vortex Express
- Impressive performance in throughput up to 200Gbit/s per port and up to 6 Million IOPS with sub-millisecond latency.
- Intelligent hardware-assisted data reduction and encryption up to 100Gbit/s.
- Software defined storage with virtually unlimited configurations.
- Plug and play VMware support.
- Easy online Upgrades in cluster environments.
- Protection against silent corruption.
- Integrates seamlessly in existing infrastructures
- No disk or shelf ordering needed.
- Disks and Shelves are transferable between systems as volumes
System Specifications
Dual Intel scalable processors: a variety of processors picked based on requirements
up to 1.5TB of memory: Memory capacity is defined depending on customer wishes for a variety of operations including Deduplication and compression in relation to storage target sizes
- 16Gb Fibre Channel
- 10/25/50/100/200Gb iSCSI
- 25/50/100/200Gb RDMA
- 12Gb SAS (optional)
- Native NVMe
- PCI-E Fabric support
- infiniband Support
- Multiprotocol: 16Gb Fibre Channel SFP+ / 10Gb iSCSI SFP+ RDMA 25GB SFP28 100GB QSFP28
– Thin Provisioning: Allocate and consume physical storage capacity as needed in disk pools. Thin is virtual mode only.
– IP & FC Remote Replication: Safely replicate data to any global location that includes mirroring thin provisioned pools
– Snapshots: Easily recover files after accidental deletion or alteration with Redirect on Write snaps
– Volume Copy/Clones: Enable seamless volume relocation and disk-based backup and recovery with a full, replicated copy of source data
– Encryption (SEDs): Render data useless to unauthorized users with drive-level encryption, even if the drive has been removed from the enclosure (internal key management included)
– Encryption (Quick Assist): Native support for Intel quick assist for inline hardware assisted data encryption
– Virtualization Integrations: VMware vSphere, vCenter, Microsoft Hyper-V
– SupportAssist: Provides enhancements enabling automated maintenance capabilities