VAST Data, the AI data platform company, is announcing two significant advancements for the VAST Data Platform, unveiling Block storage functionality for the VAST DataStore, as well as the new VAST Event Broker. These latest capabilities aim to better accommodate the complex data needs of today’s technology—such as analytics and AI—while delivering a universal, multiprotocol storage platform.
The first of these announcements, support for Block storage, is a significant milestone for VAST, according to the company. With the inclusion of Block storage, the VAST DataStore “unifies all major storage protocols (file, object, [table, streaming data,] and block) into a single AI-ready platform, eliminating the need for siloed infrastructure. It marks a paradigm shift in how enterprises manage their data, providing a single-tier, flash-based solution that is cost-effective, performant, and AI ready,” said Aaron Chaisson, VP of product and solutions at VAST Data.
Enterprises no longer need separate solutions for each storage architecture, eliminating the silos and inefficiencies associated with traditional approaches. VAST DataStore makes each data architecture type accessible within a single platform, without sacrificing performance, scalability, or economics, according to VAST Data.
“Unlike traditional storage systems that compromise on performance, scalability, or data consistency, VAST DataStore leverages its Disaggregated and Shared-Everything (DASE) architecture to provide a single-tier, all-flash platform with no trade-offs,” said Chaisson. By leveraging the power of an NVME and a global shared SSD persistence layer, VAST DataStore ensures high bandwidth, low latency, limitless expansion, and cost efficiencies.
The inclusion of Block storage now enables the following workloads:
- Large Boot from SAN for simple, scalable boot
- General purpose databases, including MySQL, PostgreSQL, Oracle, and other transactional workloads
- Virtualized environments, including VMware, Kubernetes, or other hyperconverged infrastructure solutions
- Cloud-native applications, including modern microservices and containerized apps
Additionally, VAST Data is introducing its new VAST Event Broker, a solution designed to bridge the gap between the need for real-time event streaming and centralized infrastructure. Now, enterprises no longer need a separate event-processing infrastructure to support their AI and real-time analytics initiatives. The VAST Event Broker offers a Kafka-compatible API and unites event streaming, seamless analytics, and AI within a unified, high-performance data platform, according to VAST Data.
“AI and real-time analytics demand instant data movement, but traditional data lakes and storage systems lack native event-driven capabilities. This has historically required large complex eventing systems like Kafka to moderate and cache data as it moves between systems,” explained Chaisson. “For the first time, enterprises can have real-time event streaming built directly into their AI data platform. This eliminates the need for complex event broker middleware and related infrastructure, accelerates AI-driven decision-making, and powers next-gen AI architectures with instantaneous, event-driven data flows.”
Since the VAST Event Broker is embedded directly within the VAST Data Platform, it acts as “the first event-driven transactional data warehouse and AI data platform, designed specifically to power real-time enterprise AI,” according to Chaisson. It delivers the following advantages:
- Native data awareness, generating events directly from storage interactions and thereby eliminating the need for separate data movement tools
- Ultra-low latency with instant event streaming that remove intermediaries, ultimately reducing time-to-insight
- Seamless AI integration by working natively with the VAST DataEngine and AI pipelines, further enabling automatic data retrieval and model updates
- Simplified management, with improved observability tools, expanded SQL query capabilities, and superior resilience
- 10x-plus performance advantage over Kafka on like-for-like hardware, with unlimited linear scaling
- VAST DataBase enrichment by dynamically activating computation the moment data arrives, transforming raw information into real-time intelligence and action
- Unlimited scale for streaming structured or unstructured data, which can be acted upon immediately
To learn more about VAST Data’s latest enhancements, please visit https://www.vastdata.com/.