Advanced Technology for Maximum Performance

• Technology Overview
• Blazing Fast Write Speeds
• Extends SSD Life
• Advanced Data Protection
• BonFire SAN Software
•     Networking
• Radical Cost Reductions
• ESS v7 Coming
• Rethinking File Systems

BonFire High Performance

ESS and ZFS SAN Software

BonFire is an Enterprise-grade SAN software system. Deployed on standard x86_64 server hardware, BonFire creates a powerful SAN platform that delivers performance, value, ease of management, and flexibility.

BonFire installs onto a minimal boot device and runs from system RAM. Auto configuration backups keep your configuration safe, whether you choose a USB boot device, DOM, or small SSD to boot from.

Setup is fast. Setup and activation of a complete BonFire base system typically requires less than five minutes. BonFire auto senses your disks and network interfaces. Fill in a single screen and hit enter for a functioning SAN.

Choose your storage tier.  BonFire supports both hard disk and SSD arrays. For hard disks, you get the scalability of ZFS. For pure Flash arrays, you get the unmatched speed and value of WildFire’s patented Enterprise Storage Stack.

ZFS for hard disks. BonFire sets up all hard disks as a ZFS pool for high data integrity. You choose the ZFS data protection level and BonFire takes care of the rest. Enterprise SSDs can be used for ZFS log and cache devices, or as direct storage media, though both perform less well than ESS.

ESS for SSDs. WildFire’s ESS is used for pure SSD arrays. ZFS is great for “bulk storage”, but if you need pure speed, ESS delivers 10x the bandwidth and 100x the IOPS of ZFS at a cost not much more than hard disks.

Multi-system management. BonFire web-based management is designed to support multiple servers. Whether you have two servers or hundreds, a single web login gives you controlled access to every server from a single screen. Adding a new server takes seconds. You can manage “any server” from “any server”

Large scale administrative environments. BonFire is designed to work for both small and large users. You control everything from a web browser. You see all volumes, interfaces, targets, and system statuses from one integrated console. Administration is snappy and intuitive. If you see something, you can just click on it to get more information, or you can manipulate it.

Comprehensive hardware support. BonFire is designed to work with stock x86_64 hardware. BonFire supports SATA hard disks as well as SATA, SAS, or nVME SSDs. HBAs from MicroSemi and Broadcom are supported. High speed networking from Intel, Mellanox, Broadcom, and others can be used, as can Fiber Channel boards from qLogic and Atto. BonFire-managed all-flash arrays usually operate at “wire speed” with performance only limited by the network in use. The ability to use stock hardware encourages the use of simple, low cost chassis.

Data Protection. Hard disk arrays are protected by ZFS replication. This can be mirroring (x1, or x2) or ZFS “raid” (/z1, /z2, or /z3) depending on the level of performance and data redundancy you need.

All Flash Arrays are protected with ESS and RAID-5 or RAID-6 with optional hot-spares.

High Availability (HA) and replication. Any logical volume can be replicated to a 2^nd BonFire node over an Ethernet connection. This can be an active/passive or active/active configuration depending on your application’s needs. Standard replicatoin over TCP/IP is included.  RDMA replication is available as an additional cost option

Fast administrative performance. BonFire lets you monitor clusters of systems at a single glance. BonFire has also been performance optimized. Setup and modification procedures are designed to be intuitive. The vast majority of updates execute in less than a second. Delays exceeding one second are almost always due to hardware latencies. Many SAN solutions are dramatically slower than BonFire and can consume a minute of time per individual update.

BonFire with ESS radically reduces SSD storage costs. WildFire’s Enterprise Storage Stack (ESS) remaps clusters of random writes into long linear writes. ESS linearization increases SSD random write performance by as much as 80:1. With adequate networking, a BonFire-managed 24 SSD array can achieve random 4KB write rates of 2,000,000 IOPS, and more than 10GB a second of linear updates.

Linearization also extends SSD useful life by as much as 40:1 by getting rid of the immense data amplification caused by random writes.

High speed linear writing systems let you configure systems using parity RAID rather than mirrored RAID, reducing the number of SSDs needed by almost half. Similarly, as ESS-managed SSDs last far longer, one can use either consumer SSDs or read-intensive SSDs in lieu of standard Data Center grade SSDs without reducing expected media life.  These changes can reduce SSD costs by as much as 75%.  Ask for our ESS wear and performance white paper.