We are pleased to announce the availability of Lightbits v3.17.1. This version delivers key advancements that expand deployment scale, introduce a new production-ready write buffer journaling capability, and enhance security and operational reliability across clustered environments. As a leader in high-performance Software Defined Storage that leverages NVMe over TCP block storage, Lightbits continues to provide a modern, efficient, and scalable data platform designed for demanding AI cloud, e-commerce, financial, and enterprise workloads.
1. Scaling to Meet Rapid Customer Growth with Significantly Expanded Client Connectivity
The exponential rise of AI-driven workloads is accelerating storage consumption, increasing workload density, and expanding infrastructure scale at an unprecedented pace. This version supports our customers’ rapid growth by significantly increasing the cluster capability to handle a much larger number of simultaneous client connections, especially in environments powered by high-performance NVMe over TCP storage architectures.
With improvements in subsystem handling and connection management, organizations running Software Defined Storage for Kubernetes, OpenStack, and large-scale virtualization can continue expanding without redesigning their infrastructure. This enhancement ensures that as customers onboard more users, workloads, and compute capacity, Lightbits remains a platform that empowers business growth and operational efficiency across modern cloud environments.
This enhancement also strengthens the path for what is coming next.
We are developing a major capability in which clusters will no longer operate as standalone systems but will be coordinated by an intelligent cluster manager across a federated deployment. More updates on this significant evolution are coming very soon.
2. New Write Buffer Journaling for Greater Deployment Flexibility with High Reliability
This version introduces a new write buffer journaling capability that expands the solution’s capabilities and the range of hardware platforms it can run on, while continuing to deliver the reliability, consistency, and performance required for mission-critical environments.
Lightbits has always been built on the belief that NVMe over TCP should provide high-performance storage with hardware flexibility and operational simplicity. Write buffer journaling strengthens that principle by eliminating the need for special hardware and enabling consistent data protection and durability using standard server platforms. This results in lower infrastructure cost, simpler procurement, and faster adoption, especially for organizations scaling AI infrastructure, analytics pipelines, or rapidly expanding cloud services.
The journaling capability has already matured through multiple enhancement cycles since its initial technology preview, improving journal behavior handling, strengthening consistency safeguards, enhancing troubleshooting visibility, ensuring predictable performance under load, and more. These advancements make write buffer journaling a compelling option for environments seeking a cost-efficient and flexible alternative to legacy storage architectures that require proprietary components, restricted hardware profiles, or complex operational tuning.
3. Security and Reliability Enhancements for Operational Confidence
This version also introduces improvements that strengthen security, increase operational stability, and provide clearer control for administrators managing scaled environments. Key enhancements include NVMe over TCP in-band authentication (DH-HMAC-CHAP), configurable authentication token expiration, and additional refinements that improve network rule consistency, system recovery behavior, and troubleshooting clarity. These updates help customers maintain secure access boundaries, ensure dependable service continuity, and operate Software Defined Storage environments with confidence as their workloads grow.
Introducing Cluster Federation in Tech Preview: Scaling Beyond Single-Cluster Boundaries
As customer deployments continue to grow, managing storage at scale requires more than optimizing individual clusters. This version introduces the Tech Preview of Cluster Federation, a foundational step toward Intelligent Cluster Management (ICM) that enables organizations to operate their Lightbits environments as a unified, multi-cluster fleet.
Cluster Federation provides a centralized control plane that receives provisioning requests, evaluates the real-time status of all participating clusters, and intelligently places volumes where capacity and health are optimal. By eliminating the need to interact with clusters individually, it ensures balanced growth, simplifies operations, and prevents resource hotspots that commonly occur in multi-cluster deployments.
This new capability reflects our excitement about empowering customers to expand quickly and confidently, without being constrained by cluster-level boundaries as their business and infrastructure demands accelerate. It lays the groundwork for a fully orchestrated, policy-driven fleet-scale architecture designed to support the next generation of AI cloud and large-scale virtualization workloads. You can read more details here and download the installation script for the Tech Preview version here. We would love for you to try it out and share your feedback.
Early Evaluation Availability: Ubuntu Deployment Enablement
This version also includes preliminary enablement of Lightbits cluster deployment on Ubuntu servers. (Ubuntu clients of all kinds, such as bare-metal hosts, K8s and others are already supported).
This capability has matured to the point where customer evaluations and early adoption cycles can begin. This provides added platform flexibility and a new deployment option for organizations standardizing on Ubuntu-based infrastructure, including environments running Kubernetes, OpenStack, and other Software Defined Storage ecosystems. Reach out to our sales or support team if you are interested in evaluating Lightbits running on Ubuntu.
Looking Ahead
This version continues to advance scale, flexibility, and operational assurance across NVMe over TCP deployments. The improvements in v3.17.1 reinforce our mission to deliver modern, efficient, and reliable storage for performance-sensitive workloads across cloud, virtualization, AI infrastructure, and enterprise platforms.
If you are interested in evaluating the new journaling capability, NVMe over TCP in-band authentication, expanded scalability, or Ubuntu deployment, our team is ready to support you. Additional details can be viewed in the 3.17.1 release notes here. We encourage you to share your experience and input as we continue enhancing the platform, including future intelligent cluster management capabilities that will enable orchestration and management of multiple clusters.
Join us on the Lightbits User Community Hub to share your experiences and connect with our team.