SAN JOSE, Calif., October 16, 2018 – Violin® Systems LLC today announced it has signed a Letter of Intent with X-IO Technologies to acquire X-IO Storage, the division of X-IO Technologies that developed the popular Intelligent Storage Element (ISE) flash and hybrid storage array product lines. Financial terms were not disclosed. The transaction is executed to be completed within 30 days.

Violin Systems will add X-IO ISE arrays to its flash storage product lineup, meeting the needs of a greater variety of customers and providing the industry with a wide range of solutions spanning from terabytes to multiple petabytes with enterprise-class performance, features, and reliability. Ultimately Violin Systems intends to integrate its own extreme performance technology with X-IO price-performance value to deliver transformational economics for organizations of any size.

In addition to the X-IO products and engineering team, Violin intends to retain X-IO’s world class service process and organization. This will ensure that the X-IO customer installed base, with more than 8,000 arrays continues to get the same level of service. Violin’s goal is to transform overall customer experience by utilizing the best practices from both organizations.”

X-IO Technologies will be rebranded as Axellio Inc. to focus on its solutions for edge computing and hyperconverged infrastructures.

“This acquisition will create substantial opportunity for Violin Systems in price-sensitive mid-markets where X-IO has excelled, and down the road, the opportunity to assimilate
X-IO’s product strengths so we can keep shepherding customers into the ideal storage systems as their needs evolve,” said Mark Lewis, Chairman and CEO of Violin Systems. “Our global network of partners will also welcome the ISE arrays as a cost-effective alternative for common workloads like VDI and database acceleration.”

“With the unmatched affordability of X-IO, and the extreme performance Violin is known for, the market has a clear leader in extreme performance storage solutions,” said Bill Miller, CEO of Axellio Inc. “Whether it is price/performance for midsized environments, or hyperscale density for large enterprises, Violin will be able to deliver the fastest enterprise storage in the world at the best value.” Bill Miller will be joining Violin Systems Board of Directors upon completion of acquisition.

Violin’s extreme performance platform enables a dramatic infrastructure cost savings and cost avoidance of 40 percent or more by reducing the number of servers and cores needed. Consolidated hardware in the data center means less power and cooling requirements, less management and a reduced need for the number of software and application licenses. With dramatic improvement in application performance, there is an equally dramatic improvement in the experience of the applications’ end users, resulting in improved customer satisfaction. Combined with Violin’s performance advantages, customers are able to realize dramatic competitive advantages while simultaneously saving money.

X-IO Technologies was born as XIOtech in 1997 and acquired by Seagate in 1999. Initially operating as Xiotech, part of Seagate’s Advanced Storage Architecture group, it was spun out in 2002 and sold to a venture capital firm. Then, in 2007, Xiotech acquired Seagate ASA. The company became X-IO Technologies in 2011. In 2017, X-IO introduced its first Axellio edge computing product. For more information visit https://axellio.com.

About Violin Systems

Violin, the disruptive innovator in Extreme Performance Storage, is revolutionizing how businesses operate by enabling storage technology to be Instrumental to their company by changing the SLAs and capabilities of information and application storage infrastructure. Violin extreme storage platforms, powered by Concerto OS™, a fully integrated storage operating system, is the industry leader in the combination of every significant category measured in all-flash arrays: low latency, reliability, affordability, density, scalability and of course extreme performance. With tightly integrated data services, Violin storage platforms provide a unique and leading combination of data protection, business continuity, and data reduction services in a flexible, delivering significant CAPEX and OPEX savings. Founded in 2005, Violin is headquartered in San Jose, California.

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While we do use Intel Xeon processors as controller components in our storage systems, these are not exposed to the newly identified processor exploit in a similar way as servers (or storage platforms running open operating systems). These processor vulnerabilities appear to only become exploitable if malignant software is running on the system. As the X-IO ISE is a closed embedded storage appliance, it executes a highly controlled software stack where all software components are managed and controlled by X-IO at manufacturing. Therefore, this prohibits any malignant software to run on the ISE and thus the system is not exposed to these issues.

As is always our practice, careful ongoing review of potential exposure will be done as new information becomes available. Currently, we can see no need to patch X-IO Storage Arrays. We are constantly reviewing any security concerns and will address them with the highest priority should a requirement emerge.

Still have questions? Please reach out to us: support@x-io.com 

The post Intel Security Update: appeared first on XIO Storage now VIOLIN SYSTEMS.

While eating breakfast the other day, I started reading the ingredients on the cereal box.  As you may be aware, the ingredients are listed in the order of greatest volume to the least. Aside from reminding me how much sugar I was consuming, this made me think of an analogy regarding the current state of All Flash Storage. 

At X-IO Technologies, we’ve just launched a new All Flash Storage Array. It is priced a guaranteed 40% lower than any of the perceived industry leaders.  You’re reading that right – 40% lower guaranteed – but how is that possible? Does X-IO know something about All Flash storage that the rest of the industry doesn’t?  Has X-IO found some magic formula to make enterprise storage?

It isn’t magic – I wish it was. Magic would make life a lot easier. It really isn’t something that the rest of the storage industry have either. X-IO is just doing things the rest of the industry is afraid to do. Our competitors are playing the sugar-coated cereal game. Whereas we’re being bright and healthy without losing any of that great taste. Let me explain.

If you think of a vendor’s sales and marketing costs as sugars, and the other carbs (such as fiber) as the actual product cost.  Lastly, think of the protein and fats as R&D and support (don’t tell our support team I called them fat – they may not forgive me).  How a company puts this all together is the recipe and shows their priorities.  So, why does Captain Crunch use that formula?  Well, there’s a certain demographic of the market who crave sugar. Most know it’s not great for them but they still buy it (like me).  For others, it may come down to not reading the label of what they are buying.

Translate this to the All Flash Storage Market and all too often you are paying for the sugar (marketing & sales) and not the healthy stuff (R&D and Support).  Often these sugar-coated vendors are spending as much as $3 on sales and marketing for every $1 that a customer was paying them for products and support.

Is the sugar-coating worth the cost?

The question I would propose is why would you pay 40% more for an equivalent product? i.e. for a  sugar-coated product with little nutritional value? Now it may look nice, it may even taste better when you first take a bite. But, just like eating sugar and food coloring every morning, you know there will be consequences in the longer term.

At X-IO Technologies, not only is our recipe healthy but we have some great ingredients that keep the cost low. As I mentioned before, X-IO has introduced a new product. An All Flash Array that we know we can sell (healthily) at 40% below the industry leaders.

How can we do this?  By having a fantastically engineered core software base and we can get more from less hardware – read more on this over at The Register.  That, coupled with a balanced ingredients list (Engineering, R&D, Support, and Sales/Marketing) means we can beat the competition on price without compromising on both the viability of the company and our product, delivering affordability, reliability and simplicity – guaranteed!

To learn more about our healthy All Flash Storage – ISE 900 Series recently announced contact us!

The post The All Flash Storage Market – Sugar-Coated? appeared first on XIO Storage now VIOLIN SYSTEMS.

 New, efficient deduplication engine dramatically reduces cost of enterprise flash storage

COLORADO SPRINGS, COLO. – Sept. 26, 2017 – X-IO Technologies today announced the 4^th generation of its Intelligent Storage Element (ISE) all-flash storage with the ISE 900 Series.   Featuring new performance-optimized, highly flexible deduplication capabilities that lower CPU demands, the new G4 platform makes enterprise-class flash arrays available at an unrivaled price point. The new models deliver a more powerful and the most affordable enterprise all-flash storage solution with hot-swappable drives, an enhanced web-based management platform and predictive analytics.

The 4^th generation of X-IO storage is based on more than 10 years of development and field experience and more than 8,000 units installed worldwide. The ISE 900 Series G4 platform builds on the 3^rd generation ISE development that was designed for workloads with growing volumes of data accessed concurrently for constant data availability at low latency.

“We believe the 4^th generation of our popular ISE platform is the most affordable enterprise-class all-flash storage array on the market,” said X-IO Technologies CEO Bill Miller. “ISE G4 fills the demand for companies that want cost-effective storage with the flexibility to control volumes with high or low performance requirements.  Our innovative, flexible deduplication technology puts the power to control costs in the hands of our customers.”

The new ISE 900 Series G4 features include:

• Market-leading affordability through patent-pending, lowest-overhead deduplication technology.
• Adoption of an industry-standard, high efficiency CPU platform, lowering the entry cost for enterprise flash-arrays.
• Volume-selectable deduplication enabling storage administrators to choose data volumes to be assigned either to high-performance deduplication or ultra-performance non-deduplicated volumes, all on the same array.
• Customizable web-based management platform and interface, OptimISE™, with monitored telemetry and predictive analytics to make proactive health checks easier and more effective. The management platform controls an unlimited amount of both G4 and G3 storage units.
• Hot swappable flash drives that can be serviced without performance degradation. The swappable drives replace X-IO Technologies’ former use of permanent sealed disk drive units, bringing new levels of serviceability without losing X-IO’s unique self-healing capabilities and consistent high reliability and performance.

The new ISE 900 Series G4 platform requires half the rack space of competing storage solutions with 60 drives in a 2U chassis and up to fives times the performance at up to 400,000 IOPS. The solution is scalable from 9.6TB to 725TB effective in 10 drive increments.

The X-IO ISE 900 Series G4 is available immediately via global solution partners.

Additional Resources:

Product page

Product Data Sheet

Join the Webinar

About X-IO Technologies

X-IO Technologies, an established innovator in enterprise data storage and advanced computing systems.  As the emerging leader in edge computing technologies for real-time analytics on high-volume and high-velocity data, while simultaneously a 10-year pedigree of high reliability and performance data storage.  X-IO Axellio edge processing performance enables the leading application solution providers and OEMs in cybersecurity, financial markets, defense and intelligence, healthcare, telecom and industrial IoT, while its Intelligent Storage Element (ISE) storage platform offers the industry’s highest levels of performance, ease of use, functionality and reliability, all at the lowest cost. To learn more, visit x-io.com, follow us on Twitter @xiostorage and on LinkedIn.

The post Press Release: X-IO Announces Powerful 4th Generation All-Flash ISE Storage Platform with Breakthrough Affordability appeared first on XIO Storage now VIOLIN SYSTEMS.

Ellen Rome of

Colorado Springs, Colo., May 20, 2016 – X-IO Technologies today announced that CRN®, a brand of The Channel Company, has named Ellen Rome, VP of Marketing, to its prestigious 2016 Women of the Channel list. The women executives who comprise this annual list span the IT channel, representing vendors, distributors, solution providers and other organizations that figure prominently in the channel ecosystem. Each is recognized for her outstanding leadership, vision, and unique role in driving channel growth and innovation.

CRN editors select the Women of the Channel honorees on the basis of their professional accomplishments, demonstrated expertise and ongoing dedication to the IT channel.

With more than 20 years’ experience in the high technology industry, Ellen joined X-IO technologies last year for the launch of X-IO’s eXcellence Partner Program. By protecting partners existing deals, as well as their prospective ones, X-IO Technologies ensures channel opportunities are secure from development to deployment. In addition, by reducing levels of tiering and providing a street-valued pricing model, Rome and the channel team helped ensure that working with X-IO is simple, transparent and easy.

“These executives have made a lasting mark on our industry—growing and elevating partner programs, leading transitions to new business models and introducing cutting-edge go-to-market strategies, among other remarkable achievements.” said Robert Faletra, CEO, The Channel Company. “We congratulate all the 2016 Women of the Channel and celebrate their singular contributions to the advancement of the channel ecosystem.”

“Ellen’s achievement, as one of the Women of the Channel 2016, reflects a year of dedication to the channel and our partners,” said Bill Miller, CEO at X-IO Technologies. ”At X-IO our goal is to have 100 percent of new business come through our partner channel, and Ellen’s continued determination and passion are helping us make progress on this as we invest in emerging markets.”

The 2016 Women of the Channel list will be featured in the June issue of CRN Magazine and online at www.CRN.com/wotc2016.

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@TheChannelCo names @XIOstorage Ellen Rome to @CRN 2016 Women of the Channel list #WOTC2016 www.CRN.com/wotc2016

About X-IO

X-IO Technologies provides high-performance storage that does not compromise on performance, availability, simplicity or affordability. iglu enterprise storage is the industry’s only purpose-built storage array, which flexibly supports all-flash, hybrid, or enterprise performance HDD solutions.  X-IO’s Intelligent Storage Element (ISE) is a modular scale-out storage foundation which enables customers to build comprehensive storage solutions. To learn more visit xiostorage.com.

About the Channel Company

The Channel Company enables breakthrough IT channel performance with our dominant media, engaging events, expert consulting and education, and innovative marketing services and platforms. As the channel catalyst, we connect and empower technology suppliers, solution providers and end users. Backed by more than 30 years of unequaled channel experience, we draw from our deep knowledge to envision innovative new solutions for ever-evolving challenges in the technology marketplace. www.thechannelco.com

CRN is a registered trademark of The Channel Company, LLC.  The Channel Company logo is a trademark of The Channel Company, LLC (registration pending).  All rights reserved.

Contact:       

Bill Robbins

Touchdown PR

x-io@touchdownpr.com

US: + 512-547-0921

The post Ellen Rome Recognized by CRN’s 2016 Women of the Channel appeared first on XIO Storage now VIOLIN SYSTEMS.

To us that means providing a uniquely architected, highly differentiated data storage product for our customers to use and for our partners to sell.  For over a decade, our storage products have offered just that.  Time and again, customers have selected our product lines because we do not force them to compromise on performance, availability, simplicity, or affordability.  Many vendors talk about these key attributes but very few uncompromisingly offer all of them as part of their standard offering.

Today, X-IO holds significant customer bases in the government, healthcare, and financial services industries.

These customers value X-IO solutions because they deliver the needed performance with almost no maintenance or downtime.  When customers can totally rely on their system performance, they can spend less money on redundant infrastructure, translating to greater cost savings and improved operations that the businesses can count on.

However, it sometimes just makes sense to reevaluate what is important to a business.  The storage market is highly competitive and crowded.  Just review the annual filings from our biggest competitors, and you’ll see that many companies in our industry are spending more on marketing their products than the amount of revenue these activities bring in.  Spending $2 to make $1 does not seem like a winning proposition to us in the long term.  We feel it is more responsible to reorganize and focus on our core goals of supporting our customers and helping our partners run profitably.

To that regard, we created our eXcellence Partner Program, the strongest in the industry with an unmatched partner protection both on marketing  efforts, accounts and specific opportunities.  Our engineering group has also done, and will continue to do, tremendous work in maintaining the iglu and ISE G3 product roadmaps, resulting in exceptional products which X-IO will market and support well into the next decade.  Finally, we are investing much of our engineering focus in our next generation of products – Project Axellio – a hyper-converged project that builds upon our highly successful line of storage solutions by incorporating new NVMe drives and exceptionally fast PCIe fabric, resulting in a state-of-the-art high performance compute and storage platform. 

We are in the business of keeping our clients happy and wanting to buy our wonderful products while they feel well supported and maintained.

Our loyal partners and customers can plan on X-IO staying around for a very long time while running a profitable, responsible company with a business model that will see us far into the future.

The post X-IO Delivers Reliable and Performant Data Storage Solutions for Our Customers and Partners appeared first on XIO Storage now VIOLIN SYSTEMS.

You’ve heard of snapshot technology…

Most IT Data Storage professionals have heard about and have used snapshots at some point in their career. While there are a number of different and unique uses for snapshot technology, the basic use cases are a powerful and compelling addition to the data management portfolio.

Today we’ll review the most common use cases for snapshots using X-IO Technologies’ iglu enterprise storage system. The 3 major use cases are:

1. Simple Data Recovery
2. Application Consistent Recovery
3. Replication and Disaster Recovery

Simple Data Recovery

In its simplest form, an iglu snapshot is a previous point in time view of a data image or file system kept separate from production disk data. Just as the name implies, it’s a picture of the way something looked when the “snapshot” was taken.

The most valuable use case for iglu snapshots is the ability to almost immediately recover and restore data without having to go to a traditional backup tape. This of course, is a huge time and energy saver. When it comes to recovering data, there are two important objectives to consider:

• Recovery Time Objective (RTO): How long should it take to recover the data you need?
• Recovery Effort Objective (REO): How much effort is required to actually recover the data you need?

The most obvious answers to these two questions are as fast and as easy as possible. Snapshots allow you to achieve this goal by decreasing recovery time from hours to minutes and reducing recovery effort to just a few mouse clicks. Snapshots have allowed organizations to move away from the time-consuming process of relying on backup tapes.

It’s important to consider the quantity and frequency of snapshots needed to provide the maximum amount of value to your user community. In most business environments, the general rule of thumb is fairly simple: the older the data, the less likely someone needs it. While generally true, some applications, like data mining, or historical business intelligence applications do not fit this rule. Therefore, there are diminishing returns on the value of a snapshot as the snapshot ages in general file system recovery use cases.

X-IO’s iglu uses a very efficient snapshot technology with data block differential mapping so that entire file systems do not have to be cloned or copied to create the resulting snapshot view. Only the changed data is maintained for each snapshotted volume. This conserves valuable storage space while providing fast access to multiple versions of the same file system.

Even with point in time differential snapshot technology, it’s worth considering the snapshot schedule and the number of snapshots retained for potential use. The Recovery Point Objective (RPO) is the decision made by application stakeholders about how often and how far back in time the business needs to maintain a snapshot capability. With iglu snapshot technology, the granularity of the snapshot schedule can be set for individual volumes to match business requirements.

In general, the older the snapshot, the more space will be consumed to hold the differential data. Because every business is different, the best way to determine the actual space needed is to run trial snapshot schedules for a couple of weeks. You should also be aware of any cyclical business issues that might affect the levels of file system change, such as a tax preparation applications or seasonal product applications.

We typically see snapshot schedules that span from several days to weeks with an average of 20% of total capacity used to store the snapshots. Of course, each organization’s needs may vary. iglu snapshot technology allows for automatic overwrite of the oldest snapshots, creating a “rolling” snapshot schedule that can be enabled once suitable schedules are defined.

The simplicity of the Iglu snapshot technology allows schedules to be modified very quickly and easily to adapt to changing business needs.

Application Consistent Recovery

When a snapshot is taken at a particular time point where there is no application level or user level co-ordination the resulting snapshot is called a crash consistent snapshot. A simple crash consistent snapshot does not guarantee consistency when there are multiple volumes involved; nor will it capture uncommitted writes to disk that might be in flight at the time of the snapshot. There might be additional recovery steps needed when the snapshot volume is recovered, or there might even be lost data. To prevent this from happening, iglu snapshot technology has two powerful features that can be used, Snapshot Groups, and application-aware Snapshot Agents. Snapshot Groups allow multiple SAN volumes to have synchronized snapshots. This preserves application data that spans multiple volumes. Application-aware snapshots use host based agents that work hand in hand with IGLU and are used to quiesce application level write operations for a brief time so that iglu based snapshots can capture an application consistent image or view of the volume. There are iglu host agents for the most common host based applications, ie; VMWare, Oracle, SQL Server. Exchange, etc.

With iglu snapshot technology, it is simple to create snapshots at the same point in time across multiple volumes with host based agents that allow for complete and consistent application level recovery options.

Replication and Disaster Recovery

iglu snapshot technology can be used to provide efficient, cost effective data replication options. iglu Point-in-Time snapshot based replications remove disk latencies imposed by long distance synchronous transmissions. In addition, only the point-in-time net differential changes are transferred. These features conserve network bandwidth and improve overall write performance on replicated volumes.

Local replication schedules can be timed to trigger off of local snapshot schedules so that consistent file systems are maintained at both locations. When combined with Host-based application agents,  the remote site can maintain application consistent recovery options. This saves valuable time in a DR emergency as applications can be quickly brought back online.

Summary

With X-IO’s iglu enterprise storage system, organizations have the flexibility to set up snapshot schedules that integrate with a majority of host-based applications and allow organizations to determine the quantity, frequency and lifespan of a snapshot. Organizations can quickly and easily manage snapshot schedules and adjust schedules by volume as business needs change. It’s important to remember that snapshots are a time saving tool that augments disaster recovery, but do not replace the need for off-site backup or replication. iglu snapshots can be used to improve and simplify data replication tasks that provide quick and easy data and application recovery between sites.

I hope you enjoyed learning more about iglu’s unique and powerful snapshot features. Next time, we’ll explore iglu’s impressive Continuous Data Protection capabilities. CDP offers any “point-in-time” recovery options so that even the smallest write transaction can be protected and if necessary, recovered. Stay tuned!

The post iglu Snapshot Use Case Review appeared first on XIO Storage now VIOLIN SYSTEMS.

Colorado Springs, Colo., April 19, 2016 – X-IO Technologies today announced an increase in capacity for the new iglu enterprise storage system at no additional charge, lowering the cost-per-terabyte by 25 percent. At the same time, X-IO also introduced the new Capacity Storage Element (CSE), a new tier of high-density archive storage for cost-effective, long-term data retention.

This news closely follows the announcement of new ISE models with expanded capacity, and extends X-IO’s strategy to deliver performance, availability, simplicity and affordability in a scale-up and scale-out enterprise architecture.  An independent 2015 report demonstrates a return on investment for X-IO storage systems in excess of 300 percent compared to a baseline of relying on existing alternative storage solutions. The report reveals how X-IO’s high-performance hardware, distinctive five-year warranty and array options allow enterprises to drastically lower ownership costs while delivering improved application performance and efficiencies.

“The flexible architecture of X-IO’s iglu enterprise storage family can take advantage of different technologies while enabling business applications to run at 100 percent performance at 100 percent capacity,” said Ellen Rome, vice president of marketing at X-IO Technologies. “This gives X-IO the ability to quickly deliver innovation and choice to enterprise customers, allowing them to simplify management of large amounts of data for five or more years without ripping and replacing their existing storage investments.”

The new iglu storage systems leverage a built-in high-speed architecture to help customers adopt emerging technologies easily and transparently.

New capacity modules are simply added to the infrastructure as another pool in a tier.  This flexibility enables X-IO to provide a high-density archival tier for long-term, on-line data backup and retention.

New and expanded iglu storage solutions launched today include:

• Hybrid expansion modules for new iglu 755: The new iglu 755 system provides a single hybrid pool of storage for a large amount of SSD capacity for applications that require high performance and low latency. It also nearly doubles the amount of flash capacity for data acceleration, and increases the enterprise HDD capacity for databases and virtualized applications by 50 percent over the previous iglu 740 model.
• All-flash and hybrid pool for new iglu 790: Both iglu systems provide a flash-only pool for data and a second, flash-accelerated pool of enterprise HDD capacity.  The new iglu 790 increases the amount of enterprise HDD capacity by 50 percent over the previous iglu 780.
• Performance HDD tier for new iglu 250: The new iglu 250 offers 50 percent more capacity compared to the previous model iglu 240.
• Enterprise archive tier for new iglu 120: The new iglu 120 enterprise archive tier, with 50 percent more capacity, is designed for data and applications with high throughput and durability requirements, such as backup of mission critical systems.
• Introduction of new iglu Capacity Storage Element expansion modules: Customers can add these modules to iglu systems for long-term archival and retention, with no downtime or loss of redundancy.  This simplifies management of large amounts of data with less risk. Each X-IO Capacity Storage Element expands in 15-drive packs, up to a maximum of 60 drives and up to 384 TB capacity per 4U enclosure.

Availability

The new iglu enterprise storage systems are available immediately worldwide from X-IO’s network of channel and value-added resellers. More information is available at http://xiostorage.com/products/iglu-enterprise-storage-systems/

About X-IO

X-IO Technologies provides high-performance storage that does not compromise on performance, availability, simplicity or affordability. iglu enterprise storage is the industry’s only purpose-built storage array which flexibly supports all-flash, hybrid, or enterprise performance HDD solutions.  X-IO’s Intelligent Storage Element (ISE) is a modular scale-out storage foundation which enables customers to build comprehensive storage solutions. Based in Colorado, the organization has offices throughout North America, Europe, Asia, the Middle East, and Africa. To learn more visit xiostorage.com.

Media Contacts:

Charlotte Thornton / Bill Robbins

Touchdown PR

x-io@touchdownpr.com

US: 1-512-547-0921

UK: +44 1252 717 040

The post Reduced Cost-Per-Terabyte on iglu Enterprise Storage by 25 Percent appeared first on XIO Storage now VIOLIN SYSTEMS.

When I first saw the white paper, it was a bit overwhelming and a little too much to digest in one sitting. This series of blogs will breakdown the information in the white paper into smaller chunks to make it quicker and easier to follow. However, the full white paper is available here.

The first area we are going to look at is the often confusing and misrepresented question: “What do I need high-performance flash for and why?” By identifying use cases for flash, you can evaluate your environment for opportunities to meet demands for high performance.

Impact of Virtualization on Storage workloads

In a virtualized environment, storage systems support multiple applications that each have unique workloads. When combined, these workloads create a complex landscape of different block sizes, sequential versus random access, read vs. write mixes, etc.  What this means for your storage system is that it is constantly dealing with random workloads and needs to be able to able to switch from the equivalent of unpacking a suitcase to unloading a semi-truck, all in a matter of milliseconds.

Database and online transaction processing (OTLP)

In a world where speed is key, businesses need to be able to quickly access their databases to provide both employees and customers with information. When slowdowns occur, companies waste money and customers grow frustrated; definitely not a recipe for success.

Server Virtualization

We already discussed how a storage system in a virtualized environment needs to be able to respond to random, complex workloads. Now, what happens when an application consumes more than its fair share of I/O? Well, think about that time you had a tight deadline and got frustrated with your computer’s response time and couldn’t get the job done. Super frustrating! There was likely another user or application taking way more than its fair share of computing power.

Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI)

With VDI, the random, complex workload rears its ugly head again, this time, multiplied by the size of the environment. Let’s say you have 1000 VDI users and have built your storage system around an average of only about 100 users logged in at once. What happens when 300, 500 or even 1,000 users log in/out simultaneously? What about the other users on the system? How much are they going to impacted? Are the desktops refreshed when the user logs off, and how often are the desktops refreshed for patches? Does this have to be done during “off-hours”? What if you don’t have “off-hours?” These maintenance operations are one of many issues that directly impact VDI performance and demand a high-performance storage solution to help solve. Hybrid solutions, where all-flash performance is combined with affordable hard disk storage, help meet the various demands posed by VDI environments.

Cloud multi-tenancy

Cloud service providers need high performance because they are dealing with multiple applications using a storage system in a heavily virtualized environment, while providing services for hundreds of customers. Further, cloud providers provide service and availability guarantees to customers which drive up storage costs due to overprovisioning, etc. While performance is important, the amount of capacity that can be used (without causing performance problems) directly translates to the amount of revenue a system can generate.

After reviewing these areas, a few common trends stick out that demand high-performance flash:

Virtualized Environments

Virtualization brings a bit of the unknown into your environment. Flash helps you be prepared for anything you might encounter.

• Complex, random workloads from different applications: Differences in block size and random writes/reads across the system require high-performance solutions.
• Low latency/response times: Some applications run great with <10ms of latency. Others however, require <1ms latency. What do your applications need and users expect?

Next time, we’ll take a look at modern storage architectures and compare them with X-IO’s ISE architecture. Stay tuned!

The post Why Performance Matters (Part 1) appeared first on XIO Storage now VIOLIN SYSTEMS.

Colorado Springs, Colo., April 6 2016 – X-IO Technologies today announced its ‘Fast When Full’ program that guarantees performance on its Intelligent Storage Element (ISE) 800 series All-Flash Storage Arrays. The guarantee states that the arrays deliver up to 200,000 IOPS at less than 1ms latency, and that they will also run at 100 percent performance at 100 percent capacity. [1] The company also introduced new ISE hybrid and disk performance and archive models with increased capacity levels of 50 percent.

The ISE performance guarantee and hardware enhancements build on X-IO’s commitment to providing consistent high performance, availability and simplicity to enterprise customers while lowering total cost of ownership.

“Matching the right level of storage performance for the application is the first step in optimizing capital and operational costs,” said Ellen Rome, Vice President of Marketing at X-IO Technologies. “The X-IO Fast When Full performance guarantee demonstrates how easily enterprises of all sizes can simply, efficiently and cost effectively add all-flash ISE storage to quickly accelerate application performance. Unlike others in the industry, the ISE all-flash models guarantee latency and 100 percent performance at 100 percent capacity, therefore ensuring that organizations can plan for peak performance when needed and have a reliable view to future storage expenditures.”

When customers purchase an X-IO ISE 800 series all-flash storage system, the company guarantees the system can achieve up to 200,000 IOPS at less than 1ms latency, even when at full capacity. If the guaranteed performance or latency levels are not met, X-IO will provide additional hardware at no additional cost to meet the guarantee.[2]

The new X-IO storage capacity enhancements are available on ISE hybrid, performance, and archive tiers and lower the cost per TB by more than 25 percent. ISE capacity and performance updates include:

• ISE 700 hybrid storage series: New ISE 755 and 790 models start at 3TB and 6.4TB of flash capacity, respectively, and support up to 31.3TB of flash-accelerated storage. X-IO’s Intelligent Adaptive Flash technology allows customers to choose the most efficient flash deployment for enterprise applications, automatically pinning data volumes to flash or dynamically moving data between tiers as needed.

• ISE 200 performance HDD series: Increase in usable capacity to 41.5TB with the new ISE 250 model.

• ISE 100 archive series: Increase in usable capacity to 41.5TB with the new ISE 120 model.

More product information is available on X-IO ISE data storage product page.

About X-IO

X-IO Technologies provides high-performance storage that does not compromise on performance, availability, simplicity or affordability. iglu enterprise storage is the industry’s only purpose-built storage array which flexibly supports all-flash, hybrid, or enterprise performance HDD solutions.  X-IO’s Intelligent Storage Element (ISE) is a modular scale-out storage foundation which enables customers to build comprehensive storage solutions. Based in Colorado, the organization has offices throughout North America, Europe, Asia, the Middle East, and Africa.

The post Announcing the Storage Industry’s First “Fast When Full” All-Flash Performance Guarantee appeared first on XIO Storage now VIOLIN SYSTEMS.