The epidemic will come and go again and again in 2022. On the eve of the National Day, Amin from Global Storage Observation was invited by his old friend Jing Ning to visit the Chengdu R&D Center of Fanlian Information. The whole process was received by Liu Zhi, the head of the marketing engineering department. Conduct in-depth exchanges with members of the product management, R&D, testing, service and other departments of Panlian Information.
In general, the impression of this visit and exchange can be summed up in 9 words: have ideals, have accumulation, and have innovation .
However, since the release of the new product in June this year, what kind of motivation has driven the team of Panlian Information to embark on the arduous journey of innovative storage? What kind of attraction is it that allows many technical experts to join in? One thing that is certain is that Maxima and Bole are a two-way rush to bring ideals into reality.
When asked why come to Panlian Information? Liu Zhi concluded: "The development of the storage industry has undergone many changes. In recent years, we can clearly perceive that the era of big data is developing into the era of fast data. Emerging applications such as artificial intelligence and high-performance computing have made data explode. The value of data is becoming more and more prominent, and at the same time, it also poses higher challenges to storage performance. Coupled with the intensive emergence of emerging technologies such as DPU, NVMe, and CXL, new opportunities for change are quietly coming. The two-wheel drive of demand + technology has brought Industrial changes and the growth opportunities of new companies are the core reasons for attracting our team members. Everyone is willing to work together and walk the long march of storage together.”
Figure 1: Front desk of Panlian Information Chengdu R&D Center
"At the beginning, I didn't consider joining PanUnion." Regarding why he changed his mind, a senior technical expert revealed in his memory, "It may be my personal ideal. I remember that several people talked to me at that time. , but one of the words that moved me the most is "We must seize the changes and make storage with the best performance. Our goal is to be the first in the industry." Nothing can compare with everyone working together to make a successful The product is more valuable, so I finally came. And the result is just as I expected, we made the product initially.”
"Every employee in the Fanlian team is full of passion." HRBP Gao Chenghong said, "At the beginning of the establishment of Fanlian Information, the technical team was relatively strong. Quickly enter the working state. We often hear various exchanges and discussions about products in various places in the office, and the energy infects everyone, and everyone is fully releasing their strength and potential."
At the same time, Panlian Information also attaches great importance to the cultivation of industry talents. Gao Chenghong continued: "Professional talents in the field of enterprise-level storage have been in a state of scarcity in China, and at the same time have high professional requirements. Panlian personnel have insight into the storage industry. , product/technical planning, product development, marketing and customer service delivery and other full-process areas have storage professionals to ensure the continuity and professionalism of the business. More possibilities. Therefore, we have established an internal talent echelon mechanism, and a mentor team composed of senior experts will drive the younger generation. This combination of technology experts + youth doers, I believe that in the near future, the younger generation will have a stronger breakthrough , continue to write the future of China's storage."
Friends who pay attention to the storage industry are familiar with the difficulty and risk of developing storage systems. The development of Panlian Information is not only driven by ideals, but also profound technical accumulation and industry cognition.
Andy , who has been in the field of enterprise storage since 2006 , is also the product leader of UbiPower 18000. Regarding the team, he said: "Experience is our core weapon. At the same time, we also maintain close exchanges and discussions with international and domestic storage industry teams, such as technical standard formulation and key technology research, to jointly promote the technical practice research of the industry. and development direction. Internally, technical exchanges, communication, and training between teams are also very close. For the development of start-ups and innovative companies, a cohesive team plays a decisive role. Everyone has the same goal, especially for storage technology For people, Panlian Information has built an open, confident, inclusive, and aggressive R&D culture and atmosphere, and a super-efficient communication method, which is the ideal working environment that everyone wants.”
Figure 2: Communication and discussion between teams
When it comes to the product level, Andy is even more proud. He said, "We are very clear about the direction of product research and development. For example, UbiPower, from technology pre-research, solution selection, to key technology verification, to application scenarios, is divided into three parts. The in-depth promotion of steps, stages, and industries, each step has gone through multiple rounds of intensive discussions and continuous iterations in the application process. There is only one purpose, which is to be customer-centric, to solve practical applications with high-quality solutions and services need."
Always keep in mind the reliability requirements of storage, he said: "When we do storage, the first and most basic requirement is that data cannot be lost, and there must be no failures that cause customers' business losses. The second point is to be able to guarantee the design specifications. This guarantee of customer business continuity and reliability is the bottom line of our storage staff.”
Figure 3: Communication of customers visiting the company
Always think about user needs, and take user-centeredness as the foundation of the company's development. In the process of dialogue with them, this is the true feeling of Amin observed by Global Storage. It can be seen that this is a pragmatic storage company that works hard and innovates. And more importantly, they are working hard to solve the needs of users with the experience accumulated over the years.
Eric is another product leader, responsible for UbiScale products, and has worked in Internet, Symantec Veritas and other companies. He said: "It takes a process for users to choose and approve a new storage product. Our advantage is that from the front end to the back end, we can quickly understand the target requirements, convert the requirements into product characteristics, and conduct industry-by-industry analysis one by one. , and then implement them one by one. In terms of understanding of key industries and user experience, we are very confident that we can surpass our friends."
From Panlian’s working method, we can feel that everyone’s working atmosphere, overall collaboration and work efficiency are very high. Liu Zhi said, “We all know that the quality of products comes from the design, from the process, from the management of the enterprise, from the quality of personnel. The same is true for cohesion. Panlian Information has improved the efficiency of all employees through the "three unifications", that is, unifying business knowledge, unifying business goals, and unifying business methods to promote effective collaboration among various departments of the entire organization, from individuals, The "combat" of the department has been transformed into a unified process and "customer-centric" product development thinking."
According to the analysis of Global Storage Watch Amin, innovation is the core of achieving development and transcendence in the new era, but it is not easy to achieve innovation that subverts storage system design. Under the background of ideals and accumulation, UBIX is using efficient team fighting to consolidate their viability and innovation, so that the storage dream will gradually become a reality.
In terms of innovation, UBIX, as the first company to propose SCM virtualization technology, released new innovative storage products UbiPower18000 and UbiScale12000 supporting SCM features in June this year. Regarding technological innovation, Liu Zhi shared three feelings:
First, the traditional storage design is based on the peripheral as the center. RAM memory is volatile when power off and has limited capacity, and can only play an auxiliary role in a single node. Therefore, the peripheral is the center of the design, which restricts system performance. In terms of design concept, Panlian Information has changed the peripheral as the center to memory as the center. SCM memory is also called storage-level memory. It has fast speed, large capacity, and non-volatile power failure. order of magnitude, so that a cross-node SCM resource pool can be constructed and used as the design core of a new generation of storage system.
Second, Panlian Information reconstructs the storage architecture, takes the cross-node SCM virtualization technology as the core, and builds a unified virtualized SCM resource pool as the acceleration layer of the entire storage system to achieve ultra-large bandwidth and ultra-low latency. The SCM virtualization acceleration layer realizes the acceleration and combined writing of metadata and small IO, and comprehensively improves the product's adaptability to high-performance scenarios and economical NAND Flash particles.
Third, combined with the new state of hardware development, Panlian Information fully applies lightweight design technology in storage software design technology. Including full user mode design, zero data copy, lock-free scheduling and other mechanisms, it realizes the effective matching of software design and the latest hardware, thus realizing the huge progress of storage IO latency from ms level to μs level.
When asked whether there are similar competing products abroad, Liu Zhi said with a smile: "For self-developed innovative companies, you can learn about VASTDATA and Lightbits. Our products are in the same general direction as them, but our application of new technologies more aggressive, and higher performance."
In order to have a more intuitive experience, Amin, the Global Storage Observer, then visited the product laboratory of Panlian Information R&D Center. It is worth mentioning that Fanlian’s investment in products is very complete. According to the staff, there are hundreds of rack equipment in the product laboratory that have been running all the time, and more than half of the equipment conduct automated tests every day. During the quiet period of the epidemic in Chengdu, even if the park was closed, some colleagues stayed in the company for several days to follow up product development and verification to ensure product quality.
Figure 4: Chengdu R&D Center Laboratory
During the visit, several engineers from Panlian Information have been testing around a rack. They said that the UbiPower18000 product is undergoing SPEC testing, hoping to demonstrate the ultra-high performance of the product. It is expected that after the National Day, the official Test results will be published. People in the industry should know that the SPEC test has attracted the active participation of dozens of top professional storage manufacturers in the world, such as Huawei, Sugon, Inspur, Dell EMC, and NetApp, and has been highly recognized by global enterprise customers. The test results this time also expect UBIX to demonstrate higher storage performance based on innovative technologies.
Figure 5: R&D experts are working on product configuration
postscript
From a spark to a prairie fire, from innovation to the future
Throughout the development history of enterprise-level storage, every storage change is driven by demand, demand stimulates innovation, and innovation achieves transcendence.
Through this interview, everyone fully felt that UBIX is a team with ideals, accumulation, innovation consciousness and innovation ability. From sparks to prairie fires, from innovation to the future, although Panlian Information has not started for a long time, it can make everyone believe that it is moving forward, and it is expected that they will continue to climb new peaks of storage performance and promote China's storage industry. development and progress.
（by Aming）
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[Global Storage Observation｜Technology Explanation] Focus on the analysis of technology companies, use data to speak, and show you how to understand technology. This article and the author's reply only represent personal opinions and do not constitute any investment advice.