PernixData Delivers Flash Hypervisor for Virtual Data Center

PernixData, Inc., in virtualizing server flash, announced the availability of PernixData FVP, the first hypervisor for server side flash.

This software virtualizes all server side flash into a clustered acceleration tier that enables IT administrators to quickly, easily and cost-effectively scale-out storage performance independent of storage capacity. The result is read and write performance for all VMs, without the need to change existing server and storage infrastructure. With flash storage virtualization, PernixData changes how storage is designed and operated in virtual data centers.

"Everyone running a virtual server environment wants predictable scale-out storage to go with it, but that simply hasn’t been practical to date," said Steve Duplessie, founder and senior analyst, ESG. "By virtualizing the flash layer, PernixData let’s those shops have their cake and eat it too – they let you add the performance, predictability and linear scale-out requirements you need to operate a real virtual environment, without forcing you to change out your underlying storage architecture. How can that be anything but goodness?"

"Storage has long been a war-of-boxes with marginal innovation," said Satyam Vaghani, CTO and co-founder, PernixData. "PernixData FVP is a giant leap from the storage status quo in that it brings a scale-out microsecond level storage acceleration tier to every workload, in every virtualized data center. Its enterprise features and unparalleled benefits make it a strategic infrastructure investment that will fundamentally change data center storage design forever."

Storage Performance for the Virtual Generation
FVP is installed in minutes and with no changes necessary to VMs, servers or storage. With a few clicks of a mouse, IT teams can aggregate available server side flash into clusters that are used to satisfy the storage performance needs of the virtual infrastructure.

Advantages of FVP include:

• Scale-out performance independent of storage capacity: Increased storage performance across a data center is as simple as clustering more server side flash. Performance can be architected based on specific VMs or application requirements rather than being exclusively tied to data store requirements.
• Seamless deployment: The technology leverages the investment in infrastructure that companies already have in place. The software is deployed in less than 20 minutes, with no changes (or reboots) required to VMs, servers or primary storage.  
• Clustered platform compatible with all VMware operations: uses patent-pending Flash Cluster technology to enable any host to remotely access the flash device(s) on any other host in the cluster. This technology enables FVP to support all VMware operations and products, such as vMotion, DRS, HA, Snapshot, VDP, Site Recovery Manager, Horizon View and vCloud Director. Live migrations and distributed resource management functions continue to operate transparently with FVP, with no changes to workflows and no hits to application, network or storage performance.
• Read and write acceleration with fault tolerance: FVP supports full read and write (write through / write back) acceleration for performance across all virtual applications. Writes are replicated across clustered hosts to ensure fault tolerance.

PernixData FVP version 1.0 is available. The product is sold through channel partners.

"Storage I/O bottlenecks are consistently the root cause of many of our application performance issues," said Chad Currier, IT director, Cardinal Innovations Healthcare Solutions. "In the past, our only recourse was to add additional storage capacity, which is a costly and time-consuming endeavor that does not always solve the underlying performance problem. With scale-out storage performance, PernixData enables us to finally stop throwing hardware at our storage performance problems."

"In 20 minutes, we had our PernixData flash hypervisor up and running and supporting four times more VDI sessions than is possible on our SAN alone," said Jason Rolla, CTO, Christopher Rural Health Planning Corporation. "But, the real beauty of the PernixData solution comes in its ability to grow. We can easily scale-out our storage performance needs using inexpensive server side flash, which creates a very predictable and efficient cost structure."

"It is often quite difficult to identify and correct application performance challenges when they are tied to storage IO bottlenecks," said Bryan Stalcup, CTO, Classic Graphics. "The PernixData solution changes all that. By separating storage capacity from IO, we can incrementally scale to meet the I/O demands of applications under increasing load, without investing in unneeded additional storage capacity. Within minutes of installation, we saw a substantial bump in performance across a wide range of applications. And with a few clicks of the mouse we can easily monitor key performance metrics. Using flash storage virtualization with our existing SAN devices has introduced a completely new paradigm in how we manage the performance of our virtual applications."

"At eGroup, we’re constantly designing and deploying solutions that alleviate customer pain points, including storage performance in virtualized environments," said John Flisher, technical consultant manager, eGroup. "PernixData FVP is a critical and disruptive tool which greatly improves customers’ storage performance in a scale-out manner, while allowing them to leverage existing storage and virtualization investments. We’re excited about the partnership with PernixData and the competitive advantage it brings to our mutual customers."

"PernixData’s software can provide our clients with very tangible storage performance improvements that help reduce costs and maximize operational efficiencies across the entire data center," said Christopher Mierzwa, VP storage, Sirius Computer Solutions, a national IT solutions integrator. "FVP is a key technology for us going forward. Solutions that help companies take advantage of flash ultimately help solution providers like Sirius deliver more comprehensive storage solutions."

"Flash storage virtualization has the real potential to change how companies of all sizes look at storage," said Stef Koopman, business unit manager of virtualization, ITQ Consultancy B.V., PernixData’s first partner in the Netherlands. "We are very excited to partner with PernixData on bringing this groundbreaking solution to market, which we know will become a key cornerstone of our extensive virtualization practice."

To download a free 60 day trial of FVP (registration needed)