Rocket Storage – A class of its own
Today we would like to introduce our new storage class – the Rocket Storage. The Rocket Storage is now available as a selection option in our Public Panel, in addition to our established Object and Distributed Storage classes. But what exactly is Rocket Storage, what are the use cases and how does it differ from Object or Distributed Storage?
How does our Rocket Storage work?
Briefly explained, gridscale Rocket Storage is an NVMe-based local data storage. The data storage is connected via the PCI Express protocol, instead of via SATA or AHCI as before.
This interface, which is optimized for SSDs, allows the full performance potential of SSD technology to be exploited. The direct physical connection via PCI Express, the resulting elimination of the need for protocol translators and parallel processing of requests result in lower overhead. All of these factors increase the I/O performance of our Rocket Storage by up to a hundred times compared to ordinary storage, depending on the deployment scenario.
EXCURSUS: NVME
Non Volatile Memory Express (NVMe) is a software interface released in 2011 to connect SSD storage via PCI Express. For storage media, the primary concerns are speed (IOps) of data retrieval and/or durability of data.
NVMe is supposed to connect the two components by using the PCI Express protocol. This reduces latency and overhead, especially in parallel accesses, through the use of specific commands and thus achieves a higher speed in the data transfer of »non-volatile memories«.
Perfect for demanding applications
This significant increase in access speed and data throughput makes Rocket Storage ideal for any application that requires low latency and maximum I/O performance. This is primarily for advanced database systems and enterprise workloads, but large e-commerce systems can also benefit from the features of Rocket Storage.
What are the costs?
Rocket Storage is our alternative storage option to Distributed Storage / Object Storage and is available immediately in the public cloud. The cost is based on the resources used and is currently 0.19€ per GB/month, the same as for distributed storage at standard speed.
As always, our intuitive panel, including Backup Center for easy configuration and monitoring of your storage and backup concepts, is included free of charge.
Differences to Object and Distributed Storage
Just as the main focus of Rocket Storage is low latency and high speed, also our other two storage classes have specific use cases and advantages.
Our Distributed Storage is particularly suitable when data must be highly available. To achieve this, the data is replicated in three availability zones within one site. Of course, latency suffers under this high availability.
Object Storage is our standard storage class and is very well suited for storing any amount of data in a particularly simple and secure way, including backups and access control.
The right storage for any application
With gridscale Rocket Storage, you now have storage for particularly demanding applications: low latency and maximum I/O performance included. We achieve this through our NVMe-based local data storage and, as always, you are only charged for the actual resource consumption.