• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
VFusion Open Storage

VFusion Open Storage

Redefining storage

  • Home
  • Solutions
    • Hybrid Cloud and Hypervisors
    • Backup and Disaster Recovery
    • Financial Services
    • Healthcare
    • Storage to Optimize Retail IT
  • Products
    • VFusionOS Software
      • Download FusionOS Trial
      • Request FusionOS license
    • Vortex
    • Vortex Express
    • Datamax
  • Knowledge Base
    • What is VFusionOS?
      • Fusion OS Features List
      • SAN and NAS compared to Fusion
      • Software-Defined Storage
      • GUI, TUI, CLI and RestAPI
      • Fusion OS for Virtualization
    • Data Storage
      • Data Acceleration
      • Data Integrity
      • Thin-, Thick- and Over provisioning
    • Backup & Disaster Recovery
      • Disaster Recovery for Fibre Channel
      • Cloud Data Protection Service
      • Business Continuity
      • On- & Off-site Data Protection
      • On- & Off-site backup storage solutions with VFusionOS
    • PCIE Fabric
    • All-NVME Storage
  • About Us
    • VFusion Certified Sales Professional
    • VFusion Certified Engineer Training
  • Contact

Vortex Express

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.

FeatureVfusion Vortex expressHPE
Nimble Storage (HF Series)
NetApp
FAS Series
Dell EMC
SC Series
Pure Storage FlashArray//C
Footprint for 7.3PB effective7 1U rack units with 100% NVMe with 32 NVME units per shelf64 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  
LatencyConsistent 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 NVMePCIE FabricNot supportedNot supportedNot availableDirectFlash™️
Flash Media7.6TB / 30TB Vfusion Flash modules Compatible with off the shelf Flash modulesNot supportedNot supportedNot availableProprietary QLC DirectFlash™ modules
NVME High AvailabilityHA available via PCIE fabricNot supportedNot supportedNot availableNot available
Multi-tier expandabilitySystem supports 10 NVME shelves, and up to 2048 SAS disks within the same controller.Only SAS based expansionOnly SAS based expansionOnly SAS based expansionOnly NVME based expansion
PCIE fabricUsed for all internal system operations including replication and data transferNot supportedNot supportedNot supportedNot supported
Networking supportWorks with all industry standard Network, Fc and infiniband cardsOnly manufacturer approved hardwareOnly manufacturer approved hardwareOnly manufacturer approved hardwareOnly manufacturer approved hardware
All-inclusive Software FeaturesVortex express comes standard with all featuresVia TimelessNot availableNot availableNot available
Full Performance Through Failure Or Upgrade100%100%~50% impact with controller failure per HA-pair~50% impact with controller failure per HA-pair100%
Protocol SupportNVMe-oF, NVME/TCP (RoCE),ISER, iSCSI, FC, SMB, NFS, Native NVME (on linux)FC, iSCSI, SASFC, FCoE, iSCSI, NFS, pNFS, CIFS/SMBFC, iSCSINVMe-oF (RoCE), iSCSI, FC, SMB, NFS
Contoller NDULifetime 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 SupportedFree 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

Copyright © 2023 · VFusion Storage - Redefining Storage