ESF Provides the Fastest and Most Efficient Storage Networking Solution

Download the Ethernet Storage Fabric Solution Brief

An Ethernet Storage Fabric, or ESF, is the fastest and most efficient way to network storage.
It leverages the speed, flexibility, and cost efficiencies of Ethernet with the best switching hardware and software packaged in ideal form factors to provide performance, scalability, intelligence, high availability, and simplified management for storage.

A Mellanox-powered ESF can support any storage architecture at speeds from 10 to 100Gb per second, and offers 3 times more performance than Fibre Channel at one third the price. It supports block, file, and object storage as well as hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) and software-defined storage, making it ideal for both enterprise datacenters and cloud service providers. An end-to-end ESF solution from Mellanox achieves the ultimate performance and scale and is tested together to ensure simple deployment and freedom from network bottlenecks.

Mellanox ConnectX Ethernet adapters and BlueField SmartNICs deliver intelligent networking and storage offloads including TCP, RDMA, NVMe over Fabrics (NVMe-oF), erasure coding, T10 DIF, and encryption. They reduce storage latency and free up CPU on the initiator and target, so both servers and storage have more CPU power for running applications or storage features. Mellanox Spectrum Ethernet switches deliver the lowest latency, zero avoidable packet loss, and easy management, along with unique half-width form factors. This makes Spectrum switches ideal for accelerating flash storage, big data, machine learning, and HCI clusters.

Compare the advantages of Ethernet Storage Fabric over Fibre Channel:

Storage Features	FC-SAN	ESF
Bandwidth	8/16/32 Gb/s	10/25/40/50/100 Gb/s
Data access supported	Block	Block, file, object
Cost/Port	$$ to $$$	$
Cloud	No	Yes
Hyperconverged	No	Yes
RDMA	No	Yes
Ecosystem Vendors	Two	Many
Scale-out	Rarely	Always
Table 1. The Mellanox ESF provides the fastest, most flexible and most efficient storage network available, 3x faster and 3x less expensive than Fibre Channel SAN.

HPE selects Mellanox Spectrum Ethernet Switch to power their StoreFabric M-series storage networking switches.
The M-series delivers the world's fastest and most efficient storage network for the enterprise and cloud, specifically optimized for storage there are no architectural limitations to ESF-based storage networks which surpass the price, performance, and flexibility of Fibre Channel offerings providing best storage connectivity to HPE Storage, hyperconverged, and Big Data solutions. » Learn More about HPE M-series

Mellanox ESF for Nutanix Enterprise Cloud
Enterprises of all sizes are moving away from legacy, monolithic storage systems and datacenter silos, and embracing hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) as the unified, scalable and efficient platform for their datacenters and clouds. The key to achieving improved efficiency and simplified deployment is the integration of compute, virtualization, and software defined storage into a single unified HCI platform. » Learn More