Reseller MNJ Technologies Opts for Proximal Data AutoCache

Proximal Data, Inc. announced that MNJ Technologies Direct, Inc., a service technology reseller, has selected its AutoCache to increase IO/s and VM density and reduce storage costs.

MNJ includes AutoCache in its product offerings to customers to resolve their virtual server performance issues.

“We were so pleased with how remarkably easy AutoCache was to deploy and how well it worked, we immediately scrapped the first caching product we were using and went with AutoCache instead,” said Jim Brice, director of IT, MNJ. “After acquiring some SSD devices that we deployed in our blade servers, we found AutoCache was by far and away the best caching solution.“

MNJ runs VMware View virtual desktops; however, they found that during periods of heavy user activity, the I/O demands of the virtual desktops were straining their back-end storage system. It also wanted to avoid purchasing additional servers to increase the density of VMs per host.

“One solution would have been to rearrange the pools and use a higher class of storage for the desktops, but that would have been at the expense of our server farm performance,” explained Brice. “I would need to move server IO/s to lower-class devices to ensure that the desktops operate at an acceptable rate. My other alternative, of course, was to buy additional spindles of higher-performance disks at a substantial expense. Neither option appealed to us.“

It was when MNJ started including AutoCache in its customer offerings that the company decided to try it to solve some of its own issues.

“We’ve seen very important metrics on the increased IO/s levels and the higher percentage of cache hits we’re getting, which greatly reduced the amount of I/O in the back end, thus freeing up I/O for other purposes,” said Brice. “With AutoCache operating at the server level, I can get away with using larger and slower disks on the server which are markedly cheaper. Anytime I can avoid using the more expensive higher-performance spindles, I’m saving money.“

From the MNJ end users’ perspective, AutoCache has delivered consistent around-the-clock performance. They don’t see slowdowns during the busier times in the day, especially in the early morning hours when everyone is booting up. 

“AutoCache definitely pays for itself,” Brice emphasized. “I expect the cost savings will be even more evident when I’ve added another 100 users to the system. The bottom line is that AutoCache has enabled us to continue to grow the number of VMs we have without needing additional infrastructure investment. AutoCache paid for itself immediately and will pay for itself again as we expand.“

AutoCache is a server-side caching solution with I/O intelligence that removes I/O bottlenecks and increases VM density by up to three times to attain performance for business-critical applications.