Qumulo has become the first networked storage supplier to join the Ultra Ethernet Consortium. Qumulo also announced a strategic collaboration with Intel Corporation and Arista Networks to advance IT infrastructure at the crossroads of networking, storage, and data management.
Qumulo has become the first networked storage supplier to join the Ultra Ethernet Consortium. Qumulo also announced a strategic collaboration with Intel Corporation and Arista Networks to advance IT infrastructure at the crossroads of networking, storage, and data management. These combined technologies enhance the performance and operations of Qumulo’s Scale Anywhere Data Management platform, providing significant operational benefits across data centers, networks, and storage environments, from the edge to the public cloud.
Formation and Goals of the Ultra Ethernet Consortium
The Ultra Ethernet Consortium was formed in 2023 under the auspices of the Linux Foundation to refine Ethernet technology for high-performance computing (HPC) workloads. Backed by founding members such as AMD, Arista, Broadcom, Cisco, Eviden, HPE, Intel, Meta, and Microsoft, the Consortium seeks to improve Ethernet to meet the low latency and scalability needs of HPC and AI systems. The group acknowledges that current Ethernet technology requires enhancements to meet these demands.
The Consortium’s primary focus is developing the Ultra Ethernet Transport (UET) protocol. This new Ethernet transport-layer protocol is designed to better address the specific requirements of AI and HPC workloads.
Enhancing Data Flow and Performance
Kiran Bhageshpur, Chief Technology Officer at Qumulo, emphasized the Consortium’s transformative potential. He explained that the Consortium’s work will shape how data flows through the network, bringing systems, storage, and networks closer and simplifying architectures by improving performance and reliability.
Qumulo has deployed over an exabyte of storage across hundreds of customers using Arista Networks’ EOS-based switching and routing systems. By leveraging Arista’s deep buffer architecture in the 7280/7800 series and proven leaf/spine architecture, Qumulo customers are delivering primary enterprise storage at scales ranging from terabytes to exabytes on a converged network, effectively eliminating the need for costly legacy storage networks.
Integration and Operational Value
Improving performance involves selecting the right vendors with modern architectures and integrating products in a way that delivers operational value. This integration simplifies configuration and troubleshooting while leveraging each IT technology’s strengths and capabilities. The result is a consistent primary storage system that can be utilized across the enterprise for critical business systems, SIEM systems, backups, AI training and inference, and large-scale distributed systems and applications in data centers and the cloud.
The Evolution to Ultra Ethernet
Ed Chapman, Vice President of Business Development and Strategic Alliances at Arista Networks, underscored the significance of Qumulo’s involvement in the Ultra Ethernet Consortium. He added that as Arista develops high-performance and scale networks for some of the largest AI pods on open and interoperable IP and Ethernet protocols, the evolution to Ultra Ethernet is to simplify the network and bring compute, AI processing, and storage together. Qumulo joining the UEC further validates Ethernet and IP as the foundation for the next generation of general purpose, cloud, and AI compute and storage.
This partnership and technological advancement mark a significant step forward in integrating networking, storage, and data management to meet the growing demands of modern enterprises, particularly in AI and high-performance computing.
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