Huawei's Next-Gen Storage Network NoF+ Wins Interop Best of Show Award

[Tokyo, April 14, 2021] Huawei's Next-Generation High-Performance Inter-Data Center Storage Network won Runners-up for the Best of Show Award in the Cloud Computing (Infrastructure) category at Interop Tokyo 2021. Official reviews from the organizing committee stated, "the solution uses the Non-Volatile Memory express (NVMe) over Remote Directory Memory Access over Converged Ethernet (RoCE) network protocol and combines three types of devices to achieve high reliability, low latency, and high-bandwidth and cost-effective transmission among data centers." This is the first international award that the solution, better known as NVMe over Fabric (NoF)+, has received.

Huawei's Next-Gen Storage Network NoF+ Wins Interop Tokyo 2021 Runners-up Best of Show Award

Every year, Japan's largest Information and Communications Technology (ICT) exhibition sees industry-leading companies and organizations gather to introduce their most advanced products and solutions. This year, Huawei demonstrated its next-generation NoF+ solution, which was recognized by the show's experts for its improvements in performance, reliability, and ease-of-use.

Based on all-flash data center technology and hyper-converged Ethernet, the NoF+ Solution is disrupting traditional dedicated storage networks. This is made possible thanks to joint innovation between the latest OceanStor Dorado all-flash storage and CloudEngine data center storage network switches, which provides a solution purpose-build for the all-flash era.

The NoF+ Solution also targets and overcomes common pain points for the Information Technology (IT) industry. For example, in terms of storage reliability, failover within seconds is essential; however, standard Ethernet lacks proactive fault detection and notification capabilities. Huawei's NoF+ Solution combats this by combining storage systems and network switches to implement sub-second fault response.

In terms of performance, Huawei's NoF+ changes the static watermark mode of conventional NoF solutions that fail to deliver high throughput. It also uses intelligent lossless algorithms to set up real-time watermarks and match the storage flow needs, thereby predicting service requirements on the network. As such, the solution achieves zero packet loss and zero jitter in high throughput scenarios. Lastly, the solution is easy to use. Huawei's storage and network products work in unison to create a plug-and-play solution that allows users to expand capacity and realize automatic management, simplifying future storage network expansion. The solution also implements End-to-End (E2E) data optimization in data centers.

Interop Tokyo 2021 Best of Show Award product exhibition booth

The NoF+ Solution is the result of Huawei's ongoing efforts to transform storage networks. It's currently the industry's only solution to feature zero-packet-loss Ethernet, high bandwidth, low latency, and simplified maintenance. It also facilitates the integration of storage, network, and computing resources for real-time data sharing, making it open and compatible.

Recently, Huawei has carried out joint innovation using the NoF+ Solution with some large financial and carrier enterprises, opening new doors for data infrastructure construction. Though there's a long way yet to go in terms of storage network transformation, this award represents a significant step in the right direction.