FlexSDS Scale-out Storage
Highly performance optimized SDS solution

The All-Flash Scale-out Storage Software
FlexSDS Scale-out storage software is a reliable, high performance and distributed block level storage solution which is true scale out (1-1024) and lowest TCO in the world. The distribute storage solution is designed as Server-SAN which provides full functional in iSCSI , iSER and NVMe over Fabrics transport, fully support for a verity of virtualization platform like VMWare, Hyper-v Citrix XenServer and Openstack-Qemu-KVM based HCI systems.
FlexSDS Scale-out storage software is designed and high performance optimized for all-flash appliance, fully support for NVMe kernel-bypass, RDMA, and traditional hardware (TCP, SATA / SAS disks).
What is FlexSDS product?
- Software Defined Storage solution for All-Flash (NVMe, RDMA) and traditional hardware (TCP, SATA / SAS).
- Single node and multiple nodes scale-out storage software.
- iSCSI, iSER (iSCSI over RDMA) and NVMe over Fabric (NVMe-oF) target software.
- High availability (multi-copies, auto-recovery) storage software.
- NVMe full stack kernel-bypass (end-to-end NVMe) solution.
Key Features
Scale-out and Scale-up
Working as single node mode and 1-1024 nodes scale-out mode, storage and performance linger scale-up by adding more hardware.
Rich Protocols
Provide multiple poplar interfaces in the storage world:
iSCSI, iSER and NVMe-oF
High Performance
Highly optimized storage stack with completely own advanced scheduler for getting high bandwidth, high IOPS (concurrent I/Os) and extreme low latency (less than 80 μs) .
Software Define Storage
Manage disks to be pooled, arbitrary dynamic blocks, export logical volumes with zero-copy snapshots to business server through iSCSI, iSER and NVMe over Fabrics.
High Availibilty
Providing never down (99.999%) reliability high availability solution storage service for business servers by through multi-copies, lock-free-auto-recovery.
WEB Management
Provide easy-to-install package and WEB based centralized management for multiple servers, set up a SDS storage cluster in few minutes.
FlexSDS Scale-out Server-SAN is software only and easy-to-install solution which can be easily installed into any x86 based machines, by providing a full-featured web based management system, user only need a few minutes to build one node or a multi-nodes storage cluster.
FlexSDS is also designed for Hyper-Converged Infrastructure solution, it can be deployed as HCI mode and Server-SAN mode:
For HCI mode, FlexSDS can be installed together with virtualization solution like KVM/Qemu based, one server node can offer both storage and compute service at the same time.
For Server-SAN mode, FlexSDS will work as distributed IP SAN storage and offer data service to other servers via iSCSI, iSER and NVMe-oF.

Using FlexSDS ServerSAN is very easy, user can quickly create a storage cluster in 30 minutes. All management operations can be done in all-in-one WEB management console.

Figure 1.
FlexSDS ServerSAN is designed as true scale-out distributed storage cluster, which is working on x86_64 based Linux platform, but user don’t need spend much time to configure the system, we provide “one key” install scripts will quickly deploy and configure a scale-out storage cluster in minutes.

Figure 2.
Whats need user to do are:
- Install Linux OS as hardware and OS requirements;
- Set up storage node and cluster in WEB Management.
Please see Install and Deploy FlexSDS Scale-out Storage. And for more information about how to using the product, please refer to product user’s manual.
Software requires:
- Linux with kernel >= 3.10
- OS: CentOS 7+, RockyLinux 8+ and Ubuntu 20+.
- Network Connections: RDMA (InfiniBand, RoCE, iWarp) or Ethernet (TCP/IP).
Hardware requires (minimal):
- x86 or ARM based system.
- 4 cores and more.
- 16 GB of RAM.
- At least one additional disk for storage.
Recommend Configuration (All Flash):
- Intel Xeon (e.g., 2680 v4 2.4GHZ x 2, 28 cores in total) or ARM-based equivalent performance (e.g., ARM Neoverse series)
- 64 GB DDR4 memory.
- NVMe Disks x 8
- RockyLinux 9.6, Ubuntu 24.04.
- InfiniBand or RoCEv2 Network.
Important Release: FlexSDS Scale-out Storage v7
Release Date: January 20, 2026
This release introduces comprehensive Distributed File System (DFS) capabilities:
- Distributed File System (DFS):
- User-mode file system with concurrent file sharing.
- Parallel Distributed File System (PDFS):
- High-performance, parallel client optimized for AI and data-intensive workloads.
- High Availability:
- Floating Virtual IPs (VIP) for file system access
- Web management high availability
- File System Interfaces:
- Network File System (NFS)
- FUSE3 interface
- Native high-performance API
Important Release: FlexSDS Scale-out Storage V4, Date: 01/20/2022
Release Date: January 20, 2022
This release delivers highly optimized block storage for all-flash and hybrid appliances:
- Deployment Architectures
- Single node with local redundancy
- Two nodes with witness
- Three or more nodes for true scale-out storage
- Reliability and Data Protection
- Automatic fault detection and recovery
- Replication options:
- N-way replication
- Large-set erasure coding (EC)
- Backend Engines
- Local Storage:
- User-mode NVMe
- Block devices
- File-based images
- Shared Storage:
- iSCSI / iSER / NVMe-oF SAN
- JBOF, FBOF, and similar architectures
- Local Storage:
- Storage Networking
- iSCSI, iSER, NVMe over Fabrics, and vHost
- Core Features
- Server Pool with true user-mode polling
- Software-Defined Storage Pool
- Unlimited, zero-copy snapshots
- Asynchronous remote replication over iSCSI and NVMe-oF
- Centralized web management for multiple servers
First Release: FlexSDS ServerSAN 2016 V1, Date: 12/03/2016
Release Date: December 3, 2016
This release delivers two nodes high availability and highly optimized block storage for all-flash:
- Two-node high availability architecture
- High-performance storage optimized for all-flash appliances
- Storage networking: iSCSI, iSER, and NVMe over Fabrics
- Server Pool with polling mode
- Software-Defined Storage Pool
- Unlimited, zero-copy snapshots
- High availability and replication over RDMA or TCP
- Centralized web management for multi-server environments
| VMware Ready logo assures that FlexSDS Server is fully compatible with VMware products.
VMware is virtualization leader that produces many virtualization products such as VMware ESX/ESXi, VMware Workstation, VMware vSphere. Recently it is helping build reliable and affordable private and public clouds. |







