Linode commits to NVMe storage infrastructure upgrade across its global datacentre portfolio

Linode has committed to upgrading the storage infrastructure of its entire global datacentre estate over the coming quarter to bolster the performance and resiliency of its cloud infrastructure services.   

The US-based infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) provider positions itself as an alternative public cloud provider by claiming to offer customers an affordable and simpler to use set of services.

This is part of a wider push by the company to democratise access to off-premise services and make them accessible to a much wider range of companies and users.  

The company operates 11 datacentres worldwide, including one in the UK and another in Germany, and has set out plans to upgrade the block storage infrastructure within all these sites by upgrading to a non-volatile memory express storage (NVMe) setup.

The project will pave the way for Linode to deploy its first erasure-coded block storage cluster, which will provide it with a means of storing data using the open source storage software platform Ceph, This, in turn, will use an algorithm to splice the data into chunks for performance efficiency reasons.

The upgrade process is already underway at the firm’s US-based datacentre in Atlanta, with the rest of its server farms set to be upgraded to NVMe during this quarter, with Linode claiming to be one of the first hyperscale providers to deploy the technology at scale.

“We put a lot of effort into making our block storage platform more performant and efficient,” said Linode founder and CEO Chris Aker.

“Making things faster is good. Making them faster, more resilient and more reliable is even better. And doing it in a way that doesn’t cost customers more is what developers have come to expect from us”

“Using erasure-coded clusters, we’re able to extract 160% more usable storage out of the same raw disk capacity. It’s an incredible increase in storage efficiency done in a way that allows us to deliver high performance without creating a premium tier like most other providers would.”

NVMe is essentially a hardware interface for solid-state drive (SSD) storage, which are marketed as being a step up – in performance terms – from traditional spinning hard disk drive technology.

“Making things faster is good. Making them faster, more resilient and more reliable is even better. And doing it in a way that doesn’t cost customers more is what developers have come to expect from us,” added Aker.

According to preliminary research from IaaS provider benchmarking firm, Cloud Spectator, Linode service plans that are equipped with the NVMe block storage capabilities outperform comparable offerings from the likes of DigitalOcean and premium offerings from Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft Azure.

The upgraded storage services will be offered free of charge to all Linode customers, the company confirmed.