PernixData Expands Its Storage Intelligence Solution with New Features

PernixData, a storage software provider with solutions designed for virtualized data centers, has expanded its storage intelligence solution with more enterprise-grade features, including DFTM-Z adaptive compression, intelligent I/O profiling, and Role Based Access Control (RBAC).

The new features would make it easier to decouple storage performance from capacity for optimum application performance with scale-out growth and zero disruption to existing IT infrastructure.

“Decoupling is about moving storage intelligence into servers to get scale-out performance, efficient resource management, data center design flexibility, and a future proofed storage architecture,” said Jeff Byrne, senior analyst and consultant at The Taneja Group. “PernixData has made decoupled storage a reality by creating a clustered software platform that turns high speed server media into a perfect complement to any shared storage environment.”

PernixData FVP software puts storage intelligence into high-speed server media, establishing a control point for optimizing application performance and managing data center operations with true scale-out growth. With PernixData FVP software, customers can leverage any storage platform for capacity, creating a decoupled storage architecture that maximizes design flexibility while minimizing storage costs. 

Unique features of PernixData FVP software include hypervisor clustering, topology aware fault tolerance, read and write acceleration, and seamless support for any shared block and file storage systems. In just a short period of time, these capabilities have enabled hundreds of companies across the globe to accelerate approximately 200,000 virtual workloads using a decoupled storage architecture.

The latest version of PernixData FVP software (version 2.5) would make it easier to deploy a decoupled storage architecture by adding the following new features:

• DFTM-Z adaptive compression – To make memory cost effective for all applications, including data intensive tier 1 apps like virtualized databases, PernixData introduces DFTM-Z. This is a new feature that compresses data in a DFTM environment, maximizing the capacity of the underlying RAM hardware by 4x or more on average. With DFTM-Z, customers would be able to obtain the performance of memory at the price of flash. DFTM-Z compression is adaptive based on traffic characteristics, dynamic, and transparent to the workload. This would ensure that compression overhead is never adversely impacting VM performance.
• Intelligent I/O profiling – PernixData FVP has always had the ability to accelerate on a per VM basis, applying unique acceleration policies to individual workloads. PernixData has taken this one step further by adding a new intelligent I/O profiling function to PernixData FVP software. With this new feature, PernixData FVP dynamically detects in real-time which workloads are suitable for server side acceleration and which are not (e.g. large sequential reads and writes). In the latter environment, reads and writes are automatically sent right to shared storage, bypassing local server media. This would maximize the performance of workloads using server side acceleration by ensuring server flash and RAM is available for storage acceleration when needed.
• Role Based Access Control (RBAC) – PernixData FVP software is increasingly being installed in private cloud deployments and from service providers with Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) offerings. To facilitate this trend, PernixData recently introduced a subscription version of PernixData FVP software to align with managed service offerings. In addition, these environments usually have multiple tenants who desire unique views into their own infrastructure and application environments. To support this functionality, PernixData has added Role Based Access Control (RBAC) to the latest version of PernixData FVP software, letting administrators control who has access to the PernixData user interface (UI) and what information they can see. In addition, RBAC can be used within an IT department to give granular access to acceleration data. For example, a database administrator (DBA) can be given visibility into database statistics while excluding visibility into other VMs.