OpenFlex Data24 4000 Series NVMe-oF Storage Platform

Features

Western Digital’s OpenFlex Data24 4000 series NVMe-oF storage platform extends the high performance of NVMe flash to shared storage. Similar to the original OpenFlex Data24 and the OpenFlex Data24 3200 series, it provides low-latency sharing of NVMe SSDs over a high-performance Ethernet fabric to deliver similar performance to locally attached NVMe SSDs. Unsurpassed connectivity in its class, using Western Digital RapidFlex™ NVMe-oF controllers, allows up to six hosts to be attached without a switch, like a traditional JBOF.

OpenFlex Data24 4000 series uses Western Digital’s RapidFlex A2000 Fabric Bridge devices to provide 12-ports of 100GbE which can connect to RDMA and/or TCP configured host ports. While RoCE (RDMA over Converged Ethernet) connections have historically been preferred in data centers, TCP offers greater ease-of-use and is sometimes preferred. OpenFlex Data24 4000 series offers the flexibility of connecting to either RoCE or TCP host ports for optimum usage.

OpenFlex Data24 4000 series enables PCIe Gen4 performance throughout the chassis, bringing the full performance capability of each SSD to the Ethernet fabric. PCIe Gen4 SSDs from Western Digital and 3rd parties are supported.

• Up to 368TB¹ in 2U
• 24 dual-port high-performance SSDs
• RDMA over Converged Ethernet (RoCE) or Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) connectivity
• Bandwidth match between PCIe Gen4 SSDs (Storage) and I/O (Network) – No oversubscription
• RESTful API support for simplified management
• Vertically integrated Western Digital design: PCIe SSDs, fabric adapters and platform
• N+2 fan redundancy eliminates the need for hot-swappable fan modules
• Connect directly to an Ethernet NIC in your host or through an Ethernet switch

Benefits

• Enables multiple servers to share NVMe flash storage as if it were local
• Device Sharing optional configuration utilizes NVMe Non-Transparent Bridging to allow all Ethernet ports to access any SSD
• Leverages low latency fabric to fully utilize IOPS and capacity
• Provides more efficient use of large capacity SSDs at low latency
• Balanced design to eliminate over-subscription and maintain NVMe performance
• Provides open composability through mature NVMe-oF standard
• Ideal SAS replacement option

In The News

Storage Review - August 5, 2024

Western Digital OpenFlex Data24 – GPUDirect Performance Analysis
The Western Digital OpenFlex™ Data24™ offers a robust and scalable storage solution to meet the high throughput demands of AI and other GPU-accelerated workloads. By enabling direct data paths between GPU memory and storage, the OpenFlex Data24 significantly reduces latency. It also maximizes bandwidth, ensuring efficient data handling and optimal GPU utilization for faster, more effective processing of large-scale datasets.
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¹ One terabyte (TB) is equal to one trillion bytes. Actual user capacity may be less due to operating environment