Atlantis Computing Releases In-Memory Software-Defined Storage Solution

Atlantis Computing, Inc., in software-defined storage with 500,000 VM licenses sold globally at more than 440 customers, announced its next-generation ILIO USX (Unified Software-defined Storage) solution purpose-built for virtualised server workloads such as databases, mail, collaboration, big data and any line of business application, while continuing to deliver optimisation products for desktop virtualisation.

Atlantis ILIO USX Optimization

The software enables customers to deploy up to five times more VMs on their existing storage, boosts performance and increases the flexibility of how storage is consumed in the virtualised datacentre. ILIO USX is an in-memory software-defined storage solution that can pool and optimise any class of storage including SAN, NAS, RAM or any type of DAS (SSD, Flash, SAS, SATA) to create hybrid, hyper-converged or all-flash storage from existing datacentre resources.
 
“The exponential growth of virtualised servers is leading to rapidly increasing datacentre storage requirements. Moreover, storage is purchased to meet the needs of each specific application, creating inefficient silos such as SAN, NAS and Flash storage. IT organisations are struggling to buy, manage and operate this much disparate storage,” said Torsten Volk, research director, Enterprise Management Associates. “Software-defined storage will dramatically increase the efficiency of all datacentre storage, allowing IT organisations to get more out of their existing storage and moving forward, the flexibility to transform commodity hardware into enterprise storage.”
 
Introducing ILIO USX – In-Memory Software-Defined Storage Solution
Just as server virtualisation enables IT to do more with fewer servers, ILIO USX makes it possible to do more with less storage by consolidating and increasing the efficiency of existing storage. It eliminates the inefficiencies of storage silos by unifying all storage types into a highly-optimised pool of storage resources that are now available to all applications. Policy-based controls then optimise capacity, availability and performance based on application needs, resulting in lower storage costs and better VM performance.
 
“The release marks a significant breakthrough in the virtualisation market, delivering a solution that unlocks the underutilised capacity of over $50 billion of deployed enterprise storage,” said Bernard Harguindeguy, CEO, Atlantis Computing. “Atlantis ILIO USX software gives IT the flexibility to get more out of their existing storage, even their older arrays, and to create new storage tiers by aggregating and pooling the SSDs, SAS, flash, and RAM of any number of servers.”
 
ILIO USX gives IT organisations the ability to unify all classes of storage, delivering critical data services such as HA, data protection, inline deduplication, compression and thin provisioning.

Instead of buying expensive specialised storage to meet application SLAs, customers can create the optimal type of storage characteristics for the desired application – using software:

• Software-defined hybrid array using server RAM and existing shared SAN or NAS storage to boost performance and increase the number of VMs supported
• Software-defined hyper-converged system using each servers’ RAM, Flash and SAS or SATA to create an integrated storage and compute platform
• Software-defined all-flash array using any combination of shared and local flash to amplify the flash storage capacity by up to 5x

“We have been using Atlantis ILIO software for more than a year for our VDI deployment and I have been looking forward to implementing Atlantis ILIO USX for our databases and other server workloads since I first saw the tech preview at VMworld 2013,” said Erick Stoeckle, network system manager and IT architect, Northrim Bank. “With Atlantis ILIO USX, we were able to take our EqualLogic arrays and pool them with our Nimble arrays to more than double our available storage capacity, while delivering 10x increase in the performance. By pooling and optimising lower cost storage, Atlantis ILIO USX enabled us to get more from our existing storage investments. For our application VMs, this means that we increased the number of transactions per minute by ten times without buying and managing a single new disk shelf, SSD or flash card. With Atlantis ILIO USX, we are able to scale out our existing storage infrastructure and not be tied to a specific vendor or model of array. This freedom will allow us to grow our capacities using lower cost storage while being able to maintain the high IO requirements of the business unit projects.”
 
ILIO USX Benefits:

• More VMs on Existing SAN/NAS –  Deploy up to 5x more VMs on existing storage
• Turn DAS Into enterprise Storage – Lower cost by pooling local server disk, flash, SSD and RAM
• In-Memory Performance – Boost I/O performance up to 5x using server-side flash and RAM to accelerate performance intensive applications
• Flexibility – Policy-based controls deliver optimal storage capacity, performance and availability to each VM using any class of storage; local and shared, file and block
• Instant Provisioning – Create any type of storage and clone VMs ins
• Automated Deployment – Push-Button installation, configuration, and datastore creation across the datacentre

ILIO Scalable Software-Defined Storage Platform
To date, the company has deployed software to manage and optimise more than 12PB of in-memory storage for more than 500,000 VMs globally across 440 customers, including some of the largest virtualisation deployments in the world. Customers include Blue Cross Blue Shield of Hawaii, Colt Technology Services, Frankfurter Bankgesellschaft, Hammersmith and Fulham Council, JP Morgan Chase, University Hospitals of Leicester, U.S. Army, Washington Trust Bank, and over 400 others. ILIO USX is the next generation of this in-memory architecture, purpose built to optimise and manage all virtualised server workloads including SQL server, Exchange, collaboration, test and development, and big data applications.
 
ILIO USX – In-Memory Storage Technology
It uses the hypervisor to convert server RAM into a storage resource, forming the foundation for all ILIO software-defined storage solutions. RAM access latencies are measured in nanoseconds, while spinning disk access times are measured in milliseconds, making RAM roughly 100,000 times faster than spinning disk. This use of server RAM creates abundant and inexpensive IO/s that are critical for storage performance. ILIO in-memory storage optimisation services including I/O processing, inline de-duplication, compression, coalescing, thin provisioning, data protection and HA, are automatically applied at the compute layer to boost performance, reduce storage capacity, and ensure the availability and reliability of each storage volume connected to the platform – SAN, NAS, flash, etc. This approach makes it feasible to use server RAM as a tier or as primary storage.
 
ILIO USX – Approach to Software-Defined Storage
It enables organisations to abstract any SAN, NAS, DAS, flash or server RAM to create capacity and performance resource pools, which are then used to dynamically define and create the optimal type of storage characteristics for each application:

• Hybrid – RAM and optimised SAN/NAS/DAS
• In-Memory – Redundant RAM-based storage
• Persistent In-Memory –  RAM-based storage replicated to shared storage
• All-Flash – Optimised and pooled local or shared flash

ILIO USX – Transparent Integration and Automation
It inserts transparently into existing virtualised datacentres by deploying VMs that integrate with the hypervisor layer to present standard file and block based storage to applications. It integrates with existing provisioning workflows and orchestration systems through REST APIs to enable automated policy-based provisioning. It simplifies management and makes rapid on-demand provisioning a reality by automating the deployment, configuration and creation of datastores and VMs.
 
“Innovations in software will cause data centre managers to deploy software-defined storage offerings to improve agility and QoS while optimising costs.” IT Leaders Can Benefit From Disruptive Innovation in the Storage Industry – Gartner, Arun Chandrasekaran and Dave Russell, 29 October 2013.

“VMware ESX initiated a disruption in the server market once the concept of server virtualisation was proven for mission critical applications over 10 years ago. The enterprise storage industry has been waiting for a similar tipping point, for a breakthrough technology that can drive up the utilisation rates and reduce the overall storage costs of enterprise storage supporting virtualised environments,” said Paul Burns, principal analyst at cloud research firm Neovise, LLC.