Block storage and Kafka events come to Vast Data Platform
A new Apache Kafka API-compatible service enables customers to move their data management services closer to storage using the Vast Data Platform, which now offers block storage.
Vast Data expands the core capabilities of its Vast Data Platform with native block storage and a new API service called Vast Event Broker to increase data analytics decision speeds.
The additions are useful expansions and capabilities for existing Vast Data Platform customers, but they are limited in application or wider appeal, according to storage industry analysts.
Vast Data now considers its platform, a software-defined storage offering with data management features, an AI data repository, said Ray Lucchesi, founder and president of Silverton Consulting. The Vast Event Broker gives the platform new capabilities for data warehousing, while block storage adds to the core storage capabilities.
Data warehouses, which are established after culling data from a wider array of enterprise data lakehouses, can supply relevant data for trained AI systems for inferencing, a process that enables AI models to produce new and unique outputs, he said.
People are starting to realize the money is in the [AI] inferencing.
Ray Lucchesi Founder and president, Silverton Consulting
The boom of AI training is fading, Lucchesi said, but technologies to improve inferencing results and speed are a new selling opportunity for companies like Vast that offer AI technologies.
"It provides another reason to be part of the [Vast] ecosystem," Lucchesi said. "[Vast is] offering more services that are adjacent to AI. People are starting to realize the money is in the [AI] inferencing."
Both capabilities will be included in the Vast platform in March.
Kafkaesque
Vast Event Broker provides an Apache Kafka API-compatible event streaming engine that removes the need for event brokers to manage data stored in the Vast Data Platform.
This stateless broker service automatically streams information into Vast DataBase, another service designed to create databases within the platform. The integration includes group messaging, event topic metadata and other Kafka-compatible tagging and logging information, according to Vast.
Vast Event Broker capability enables customers to connect real-time data at ingestion with archival data within the Vast platform without Kafka clusters or more software that creates latency, said Aaron Chaisson, vice president of product and solutions marketing at Vast Data.
"The data in your warehouse would only be as good as your last event cycle [previously]," he said. "You end up having these islands of [active and archived] data. By having a database that accepts real-time data, you can close that [information] gap."
The Event Broker capability offers an interesting addition to the Vast platform, potentially expanding its appeal to data analytics to beyond storage teams, said Steve MacDowell, principal analyst and founder of NAND Research.
"Integrating that functionality is a natural extension of what Vast did with the database [offerings]," he said. "They're trying to build a soup-to-nuts data infrastructure appliance."
Block by block
The new block storage capability complements Vast's existing file and object storage services but isn't built for business-critical enterprise databases like Oracle, Chaison said.
The Vast block storage aims to meet MSP or hyperscaler customer needs, like workloads that require virtualization or containers and faster booting speeds, he said. The addition of block storage also enables customers to import some workloads into the Vast Data Platform that previously had to exist outside it.
"We really see this as completing our original vision of a unified platform," he said.
The Vast block protocol uses NVMe over TCP and supports up to a million hosts, a million volume elements and 32,000 virtual arrays, according to Vast.
Block storage remains a vital enterprise storage service, primarily for VMware or other virtualization platforms, said Mike Matchett, founder and principal analyst at Small World Big Data.
Offering software-defined block storage now gives the platform greater parity to competitors or first-party offerings like Broadcom's vSan storage software for VMware.
"[Block storage] does give them some argument against vSan and other software-defined storage," Matchett said. "They're trying to fill their quiver with more stuff to bring to cloud providers."
McDowell said a performance difference compared with competitors may not matter for Vast customers, as the addition of database and data management capabilities helps the platform stand out.
"Unified [storage] is the new normal," McDowell said. "It's very basic block functionality that's going to serve very niche needs. [But] there are a lot of features [on the] road map. We'll see where they go."
Tim McCarthy is a news writer for Informa TechTarget covering cloud and data storage.
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