Maxta goes gung-ho for Grantley, cuddles up to big daddy Intel

Hyper-converged software startup Maxta has repaid Intel’s faith and investment with updated software featuring Grantley support and an Intel-flavoured reference architecture – eat this and you will have lots of Intel inside.

Maxta (background here) has added stuff to its MxSP storage software platform:

• MaxDeploy pre-validated reference architectures
• First hyper-converged system using Intel Grantley platform
• More automation
• Performance improvements through Grantley and better caching algorithms and improved flash utilisation (full metadata caching on SSD) delivering consistent and predictable latency.

Grantley processors are called Xeon E5-2600 v3 processors, and Maxta says it means more speed, cores, NVMe storage, and DDR4 memory and 40GBitE support.

The MaxDeploy reference designs work with Cisco, Dell, HP, Intel (server boards), Lenovo and Supermicro servers. Channel partners can configure and sell hyper-converged MxSP systems on their selected hardware. It includes Intel PCIe flash products and Intel’s XL710 10/40GbE 40Gbit/s Ethernet controller also plays a role.

Intel veep and GM Al Diaz was complimentary: “We believe that MaxDeploy and Intel Server Boards and Systems provide enterprises with more options for flexibility and capacity scalability,” but he would say that, wouldn’t he.

The automation additions include an enhanced dashboard showing capacity savings and performance data. There is also “improved VM-centric automation, simplified data protection, greater availability, and resiliency with support for VMware Stretch Storage Metro Cluster for continuous availability in case of site, data centre, or rack failure, along with improved self-healing capabilities to detect and auto-correct inconsistencies in data.”

The self-healing capabilities involve the detecting and auto-correcting checksum inconsistencies in data with base virtual machines, snapshots and clones.

Maxta said MxSP with Grantley CPUs support 40 per cent more Exchange users than prior generations of Xeon processors. There are, we're told, “significant improvements over the previous generation of x86 servers in the number of I/O transactions per second, read and write latency, and the number of Virtual Machines deployed on a server.”

No doubt Maxta hopes it has a time-to-market advantage over competitors like Nutanix, Scale Computing and Simplivity with this Grantley support.

Biz tech wiki site Wikibon, in the form of co-founder and CTO David Floyer, thinks so. “The pre-validated approach such as the MaxDeploy Reference Architecture, along with Maxta MxSP software, assists organisations to deploy predictable, repeatable, and scalable IT infrastructure. The Maxta partnership with Intel is a key asset in offering converged Server SAN solutions in both enterprise and hyper-converged deployments.”

We wouldn't have thought AMD would agree. Maxta is in danger of becoming an Intel ISV/marketing associate, which may not matter at all in terms of business success and growth.

Find out more about the MaxDeploy reference architecture here. ®