In early 2012 SanDisk, well-known manufacturer of flash memory products, acquired FlashSoft. Like a number of other companies in the virtualization storage space, FlashSoft has several different products designed to use SSD and flash memory to cache storage I/O. They have specific products for Microsoft Windows Server and Red Hat Enterprise Linux (and clones). They also have a product for VMware environments, SanDisk FlashSoft 3.1 for VMware vSphere.
TVP Tag Archives
When and Where to Use NAND Flash SSD for Virtual Servers
Keeping in mind that the best server and storage IO is the one that you do not have to do, then second best is that which has the least impact combined with best benefit to an application. This is where SSD, including DRAM- and NAND-flash-based solutions, comes into the conversation for storage performance optimization.
Tintri OS 2.0 & ReplicateVM
Tintri is now shipping version 2.0 of their array software, Tintri OS, which further automates administration of their arrays and adds ReplicateVM remote replication features. ReplicateVM is an incredibly flexible asynchronous, IP-based replication technology that operates per-VM, allowing each VM to have custom RPOs.
A Look at the Nutanix NX-3000 Virtual Computing Platform
A look at how the Nutanix NX-3000 stacks up against other, more traditional data center converged infrastructures, what makes them special, and why everybody is trying to copy them in some way.
Caching throughout the Stack
One sure way to improve performance is to cache the non-dynamic data of any application. We did this to improve the overall performance of The Virtualization Practice website. However, there are many places within the stack to improve overall performance by caching, and this got me to thinking of all the different types. At the last Austin VMUG, there were at least three vendors selling caching solutions that were designed to improve overall performance by as little as 2x to upwards of 50x improvements. That is quite a lot of improvement in application performance. Where do all these caching products fit into the stack?
Hard Disk Drives (HDD) for virtual environments (Part II) how drives differ
In part I of this series we looked at basic Hard Disk Drive (HDD) characteristics and wrapped up with the question of what is the best type of HDD to use?