Supermicro Lightbits NVMe/TCP Storage for CSPs, Private, and Edge Clouds

Disaggregated, low latency block storage for cloud-native applications

Solution Overview

It’s commonly recommended that NVMe-based Direct Attached Storage (DAS) be deployed to run distributed and cloud-native applications, especially high-performance databases including SQL and NoSQL. However, this approach often results in chronic over provisioning and underutilization.

Thus, Supermicro and Lightbits jointly bring this software-defined NVMe®/TCP storage solution bundle that combines Supermicro’s high performance Intel 3rd gen NVMe systems with Intel® Optane™ Persistent Memory (Pmem) and Lightbits’s technology to fully utilize NVMe and provide outstanding performance and low latency through standard Ethernet network to accelerate your cloud-native applications and reduce TCO.

Lightbits Solution diagram
Lightbits Solution

Solution Benefits

  • Flexibility and Operational Efficiency
    • Software-defined, highly available block storage, standard infrastructure
    • Scale storage & compute independently
    • Rich data services
  • High Performance
    • Low latency, high IOPs, high bandwidth
  • Lower TCO
    • Maximize utilization/ROI
    • Increase flash endurance
  • No change in network
    • Standard TCP/IP network infrastructure - ubiquitous, simple & efficient
    • Run on standard Ethernet NICs

Solution Features

High Performance, Low Latency

High Performance, Low Latency

  • Millions of IOPS
  • Reduction in Tail Latency/s
Clustered Failover Solution

Clustered Failover Solution

  • Distributed and Durable Cluster Management
  • Fast Failover Handling (2-3 seconds)
  • 3 to 16 Storage Servers per Cluster
  • Automatic Volume Placement
Management

Management

  • RESTful API provides a standard HTTPS-based interface
  • CLI support for scripts and monitoring
  • Metrics and Alerts based on Prometheus
  • Pre-configured Grafana dashboards
100% Target Side Solution

100% Target Side Solution

  • Leveraging standard NVMeoF 1.1 multipathing (ANA)
  • Clients can be connected to multiple storage
  • clusters enabling effectively unlimited capacity
Rich Data Service

Rich Data Service

  • Thin Provisioning
  • Compression
  • Elastic RAID
  • Volume Replication
Ecosystem Integration

Ecosystem Integration

  • Kubernetes via CSI
  • Compression
  • Ansible playbooks for various Linux distributions

Use Cases

Database

Database

  • Single instance database (MySQL, Postgres, Maria DB)
  • Distributed/Replicated databases (MongoDB, CockroachDB, Cassandra)
Analytics

Analytics

  • Traditional, FinTech
  • Log processing (ELK, Splunk)
  • Apache Kafka streams
Virtual Machine

Virtual Machine

  • VMware ESXi 7.0U3
Cloud Infrastructure

Cloud Infrastructure

  • Container
Service Providers

Service Providers

  • IaaS (block storage)

Supermicro Lightbits Reference Architecture – Intel X12 Systems

 Supermicro 2U Ultra Server SYS-220U-TNRSupermicro 2U Ultra Server SYS-220U-TNRSupermicro 2U Ultra Server SYS-220U-TNRSupermicro 2U Ultra Server SYS-220U-TNRSupermicro 2U BigTwin® Multi-node Server SYS-220BT-DNTRSupermicro 1U Single-Processor 10-NVMe Storage Server SSG-110P-NTR10
ConfigurationPerformancePerformance & CapacityCapacityBasicDensityBasic
Server SKUSYS-220U-TNRSYS-220U-TNRSYS-220U-TNRSYS-220U-TNRSYS-220BT-DNTRSSG-110P-NTR10
Form Factor2U1N2U1N2U1N2U1N2U2N1U1N
Node Raw Capacity153TB307.20TB307.20TB153TB368TB61.44TB
Effective CapacityUp to 800TBUp to 800TBUp to 800TBUp to 393TBUp to 786TBUp to 188TB
CPU2x ICX 63382x ICX 6336Y2x ICX 6336Y2x ICX 6336Y4x ICX 6336Y1x 6314U
Memory16x 16GB16x 16GB16x 16GB8x 16GB16x 16GB4x 32GB
PMEM16x 128GB16x 128GB16x 128GB8x 128GB16x 128GB4x 128GB
NVMe Drives20x 7.68TB20x 15.36TB20x 15.36TB20x 7.68TB24x 15.36TB8x 7.68TB
Networking2x 2p 100GbE2x 2p 100GbE1x 2p 100GbE1x 2p 100GbE2x 2p 100GbE1x 2p 100GbE
Lightbits License1x SFT-LB-LBOS210X1x SFT-LB-LBOS210X1x SFT-LB-LBOS210X1x SFT-LB-LBOS210X1x SFT-LB-LBOS210X1x SFT-LB-LBOS210X
IOPS*
  • [Read 100%: 4430K]
  • [Write 100%: 700K]
  • [Read-Write 70-30%: 1540K]
  • [Read-Write 50-50%: 1100K]
  • [Read 100%: 4070K]
  • [Write 100%: 650K]
  • [Read-Write 70-30%: 1450K]
  • [Read-Write 50-50%: 1000K]
  • [Read 100%: 2600K]
  • [Write 100%: 500K]
  • [Read-Write 70-30%: 1140K]
  • [Read-Write 50-50%: 860K]
  • [Read 100%: 2400K]
  • [Write 100%: 450K]
  • [Read-Write 70-30%: 1000K]
  • [Read-Write 50-50%: 800K]
  • [Read 100%: 4800K]
  • [Write 100%: 900K]
  • [Read-Write 70-30%: 2000K]
  • [Read-Write 50-50%: 1600K]
  • [Read 100%: 1120K]
  • [Write 100%: 240K]
  • [Read-Write 70-30%: 520K]
  • [Read-Write 50-50%: 380K]
  • 1. Lightbits cluster size: 3~16 nodes
  • 2. Please contact Lightbits-PM@supermicro.com for BOM
  • 3. X = 1, 3, or 5 (1 year, 3 years, 5 years)
  • * Lightbits provided

Supermicro Lightbits-Ready Server Platforms

SYS-220U-TNR

SYS-220U-TNR

  • Dual 3rd Gen Intel® Xeon® Scalable Processors
  • 32x DIMM Slots; Up to 8TB DRAM; Up to 8TB Intel® Optane™ Persistent Memory (up to 12TB with DRAM);
  • 1x internal PCI-E 4.0 x8 (in x16 slot, LP); 1x PCI-E 4.0 x16 (FH, 10.5"L); 1x PCI-E 4.0 x16 (LP); 5x PCI-E 4.0 x8 (FH, 10.5"L)
  • 10x Hot-swap U.2 NVMe4/NVMe3/SATA3 fully-hybrid drive support
  • Networking options:
    • 2x 10GBase-T with Intel® X710-AT2 (optional)
    • or 2x 10GBase-T and 2x 10G SFP+ with Intel® X710-TM4 (optional)
  • 600W redundant Titanium level power supplies
Learn more
SYS-220BT-DNTR

SYS-220BT-DNTR

Two hot-pluggable systems (nodes) in a 2U form factor. Each node supports the following:

  • Dual 3rd Gen Intel® Xeon® Scalable Processors
  • 20x DIMM Slots (16x DIMM Slots + 4x Intel® Optane™ Persistent Memory Slots)
  • 1x PCI-E 4.0 x16 (LP) slot; 2x PCI-E 4.0 x8 (LP) slot; 1x AIOM PCI-E 4.0 x16
  • 12x Hot-swap 2.5" drive bays; 12 PCI-E 4.0 NVMe/SATA 2.5" drives
  • 2200W redundant Titanium level power supplies
Learn more
SSG-110P-NTR10

SSG-110P-NTR10

  • Single 3rd Gen Intel® Xeon® Scalable Processor
  • 8 DIMMs; Supports 3DS DDR4-3200: RDIMM/LRDIMM/Intel® DCPMM
  • 1x PCI-E 4.0 x16
  • 10x Hot-swap 2.5" All-NVMe Gen 4 tool-less drive bays; Onboard 2x NVMe Gen 3/SATA M.2
  • 860W redundant Platinum level power supplies
Learn more
Resources