VAST Data has added block access to its existing file and object protocol support along with Kafka event broking to provide real-time data streaming to AI, ML, and analytic workloads.
VAST Data’s storage arrays, with their scale-out, disaggregated shared everything (DASE) architecture, support parallel access to file and object data, and have a software stack featuring a DataCatalog, DataBase, DataSpace, and DataEngine. The system already supports real-time notification of data change events to external Kafka clusters. Now it has its own Kafka event broker, added to the DataEngine, to receive, store, and distribute such events.
In a statement Aaron Chaisson, VP Product and Solutions Marketing at VAST, said: “With today’s announcement, we’re eliminating the data silos that once hindered AI and analytics initiatives, affording customers faster, more accurate decisions and unlocking data-driven growth.”
By providing block-level data access, VAST Data says it can now support classic structured data applications such as relational databases, SQL or NoSQL, ERP, and CRM systems along with virtualization (VMware, Hyper-V, KVM) and containerized workloads. The whole set of legacy structured data workloads is able to run with a VAST Data storage array, giving customers a chance to consolidate their block, file, object, tabular, and streaming storage onto a single storage system. The hope is that channel partners will pitch the migration of such block access-dependent workloads off existing block arrays – Dell PowerMax, Hitachi Vantara VSP One, and IBM DS8000, for example.
VAST is also supporting Boot from SAN, and says “enterprises can streamline server deployment and management by eliminating reliance on local disks.” It claims this approach “enhances disaster recovery, improves redundancy, and enables rapid provisioning of new virtual or bare-metal servers while ensuring consistent performance across IT environments.”
The event broking addition allows, VAST says, “AI agents to instantly act on incoming data for real-time intelligence and automation.”
The company says customers can have all data accessible in its single system, addressing all workloads within one unified architecture. It has “unified transactional, analytical, AI, and real-time streaming workloads” via the event broker. Customers can “stream event logs to systems for processing, publishing and processing telemetry data in real time, giving event-driven updates to users, and streaming data to models for real-time training or inference.”
VAST says Kafka implementations are widely used for data movement but “create isolated event data silos that hinder seamless analytics.” They involve infrastructure sprawl, data replication, and slow batch ETL processes “that delay real-time insights.” It’s new Event Broker can activate computation when new data points enter VAST’s DataBase. It should enable AI agents and applications to respond instantly to events and help automate decision-making. The Event Broker delivers, VAST claims, “a 10x+ performance advantage over Kafka on like-for-like hardware, with unlimited linear scaling, capable of processing over 500 million messages per second across VAST’s largest cluster deployments today.”
VAST Co-founder Jeff Denworth stated: “By merging event streaming, analytics, and AI into a single platform, VAST is removing decades of data pipeline inefficiencies and event streaming complexity, empowering organizations to detect fraud in milliseconds, correlate intelligence signals globally, act on data-driven insights instantly, and deliver AI-enabled customer experiences. This is the future of real-time intelligence, built for the AI era.”
All these methods of data access; block, file, object, tabular and streaming, can use VAST’s snapshot, replication, multi-tenancy, QoS, encryption, and role-based access control services. It claims that in the AWS cloud, customers would need 21 separate services to do what VAST does.
Competing systems that offer unified block, file, and object data access include Red Hat’s Ceph and StorOne. Both Quantum’s Myriad and HPE’s Alletra MP X10000 are based on key-value stores that have files or object access protocols supported and can be extended to add block or other protocols.
VAST’s support for block data will bring it into direct competition with Infinidat high-end SAN storage for the first time.
NetApp’s ONTAP arrays offer unified file and block access. However, NetApp found some of its all-flash customers preferred buying block-only ASA (SAN) arrays instead of classic ONTAP AFF arrays. They wanted to de-consolidate rather than consolidate, indicating that not all customers want a single, do-it-all unified array.
VAST has promised unified data access for some time, so we can envisage that many of its customers will look positively at moving block-based application data stores to their VAST systems.
Read more about the background to block data access support in a VAST blog. VAST’s Event Broker will be available in March.
