AI/ML

VAST Data launches Amplify to reclaim stranded NVMe capacity

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VAST Data’s Amplify is a formal program designed to assess a customer’s installed NVMe SSDs and determine whether VAST’s claimed lower-overhead data protection and more efficient data reduction can recover stranded capacity, helping customers work around SSD supply shortages and rising prices.

The company outlined its Flash Reclaim concept earlier this month, in response to the relatively sudden extension of SSD delivery times due to greatly increased AI-related demand outpacing NAND fabricators and SSD suppliers’ ability to increase production. The supply shortage is set to continue into 2028, and full or part SSD storage-based vendors have crafted mitigation strategies around tiering to disk and/or the public cloud. Tiering to disk is not feasible for all-flash suppliers like VAST Data. Believing it has superior data protection and data reduction technologies, VAST says it can make much better use of installed NVMe SSD capacity than other suppliers’ all-flash storage systems.

Phil Manez

Phil Manez, VP for Go To Market Execution at VAST Data, said: “Storage scarcity is forcing organizations into impossible trade-offs – delay programs, ration capacity, or accept whatever allocation they can get. With VAST Amplify, we’re giving customers a practical alternative: reclaim the flash you already have, consolidate it into a modern architecture, and materially increase the usable capacity and performance you can deliver to the business.”

The message is that VAST will qualify a customer’s all-flash data estates to assess potential capacity recovery and present a plan to recover it. Its recovery claims rest on two stools. One is data protection where it says its erasure coding scheme uses less overhead than alternative RAID or replication-based schemes, meaning less capacity is needed to store the data protection overhead. The other is data reduction, where its combination of compression and system-wide deduplication is more efficient than alternative schemes, meaning there is less data to store.

The combination of the two can lead to an up to 6x or more increase in effective capacity. That’s the headline claim, and it’s backed up with various stats discussing different kinds of workloads, stored data types, and the average distribution of capacity recovery across them.

This is the important part, and a downloadable 12-page whitepaper discusses it in some detail. For example, a chart shows the distribution of data reduction ratio (DRR) levels across VAST’s customer base:

There are no guarantees in VAST’s Amplify program. A program brief document outlines the process and discusses potential capacity uplifts.

Using VAST’s records of its customers’ storage, it says the median fleet protection overhead is approximately 12 percent, which results in around 2.1x more effective capacity than raw flash. The median DRR is 1.87:1, returning an approximate 2.5x to 3x effective capacity increase compared to shared-nothing type storage systems. The combination can yield a 4-6x effective capacity improvement.

VAST’s assessors have to see if replacing existing and alternate suppliers’ NVMe SSD-based storage with VAST software managing the same drives actually delivers worthwhile results.

It says that at the conclusion of the assessment, customers receive:

  • An eligibility determination for the VAST Amplify program
  • A recommended architectural path (for example, software deployment on existing servers or redeployment into NVMe-based
  • infrastructure)
  • An estimated range of effective capacity amplification
  • Guidance on next steps for qualification and implementation

The implementation plan looks at:

  • Existing NVMe SSD models and quantities
  • Current server platforms and their suitability for reuse
  • Required additional components, such as VAST enclosures, CNodes and NVMe fabric, and cables.
  • Whether SSDs remain in place (EBox model) or are redeployed into JBOFs
  • Formatting and onboarding of SSDs into a VAST cluster

There’s no suggestion customers pay for the assessment. A VAST blog discusses the Amplify program, and the Amplify landing page is here.

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