Infinite I/O

I spend most of my weeks talking to VMware customers about applications that they want to perform better. It’s probably not a surprise that the majority of these conversations revolve around databases: ERP, CRM, EMR, BI, and an assortment of other fun acronyms. What’s interesting is that even the organizations who are already using high-end hardware -- including all-flash arrays -- wonder where they can find the “next big thing” to aid them in IT’s ongoing saga to deliver greater business value and help their users be more productive.

We have a great technical team here at Infinio and starting today, they'll be sharing their point of view on technology, practitioner tips, and technical answers to common questions.

Today we continue our series on VAIO.  You can start with the prologue ("Running vSphere 6? Why you should care about VAIO") or just start here. 

There is something special about Spring arriving in New England, where Infinio is headquartered: days start to get longer, the Red Sox fire up a new season, and lots of people are motivated to clean up yards and outdoor space as we dig out from winter.   

Today we announced a North American agreement with worldwide technology distribution leader, Tech Data.  This is a landmark moment in our company history as we move forward with a partnership to bring our server-side cache technology to partners and customers.

One of the unique things about Infinio is that our software is based on a content-based architecture.  This means deduplication is native and highly effective, which is why we can offer massive performance benefits using just small amounts of RAM.

Increasingly more innovative technologies have focused on NFS-based datastores in the VMware environment. Hybrid arrays from Tintri to Coho Data focus on the less-appreciated protocol. NetApp has made NFS valuable for VM administrators from day one. Infinio Accelerator focuses on adding scale-out storage acceleration for those running the protocol today. Despite all of the awesome technology developed in the space, the perception remains sticky on how NFS is a less desirable choice over block-level protocols. 

I use the term spindle contention often, but rarely take the step back and review what that means. 

RAM is an abundant, but ultimately limited resource in server environments. Part of any performance troubleshooting effort will go into identifying where to most effectively allocate the resource. More often than not, I believe the allocation of available memory to Infinio is of more value to your infrastructure.

The more I read up on options in the server-side caching domain, the more I see solutions complementing each other as opposed to competing. The difference between View Storage Accelerator (formerly CBRC) and Infinio is interesting, as is the fact they could work in tandem to the benefit of the whole infrastructure.