Enmotus: FuzeDrive Server Software for Windows and Linux

Enmotus Inc. announced availability of FuzeDrive Server for Windows and Linux, a new class of software defined storage acceleration for industry standard servers, leveraging off the shelf SSDs and storage class emory (SCM). 

FuzeDrive’s proprietary real-time MicroTiering storage algorithms automatically load-balance data across different devices and overcomes limits on performance, CPU loading and fast-tier capacity commonly encountered in today’s caching approaches. Enhanced features offer greater flexibility to IT managers such as file pinning, integrated into the OS’s native file browsing tools, and at-a-glance visual mapping tools that provide greater visibility and control over important data.
 
“Today’s SSD caching approaches have allowed data center system builders to accelerate servers with minimal disruption, but as SSDs grow in capacity and newer SCM devices come on line, we are now starting to see limits on how fast cache architectures can operate,” said Andy Mills, CEO and co-founder, Enmotus. “We believe our non-caching approach to accelerating servers will revolutionize the way data centers are built, especially as hyper-converged environments in both premise and cloud are increasingly adopted.“
 
FuzeDrive is the first software based solution to optimize both performance and capacity at block device level in DAS configurations.

DAS is increasingly being used as the primary storage in clustered servers and almost exclusively in hyper-converged servers, eliminating significant costs associated with SANs.

By using a ultra-low latency storage hypervisor combined with an intelligent block-level statistics and policy based load balancing engine, FuzeDrive breaks through the CPU loading and capacity barriers commonly encountered in caching.

Caching often imposes a limit on the size of the fast tier capacity as higher amounts require more CPU cycles to manage the cache management tables and algorithm, often consuming more than 50% of the host CPU cycles in high traffic configurations. FuzeDrive on the other hand, operates consistently across all fast tier sizes, with no more than a few percentage of the CPU, allowing larger fast tiers to be created.

The benefit is that a much larger number of VMs may be supported on a single converged server-storage node for example, and larger files such as high resolution video accommodated.

Furthermore, the MicroTiering algorithms are designed to allow the fast tier capacity to be part of the overall storage presented to the applications or VMs, allowing improvements in the cost-per-usable terabyte for each server, especially as terabyte class SSDs enter mainstream.
 
“Even SSDs are becoming bottlenecks in some cases. As a result, newer classes of storage devices continue to appear that can take advantage of higher performance busses inside servers, NVDIMMs being a great example,” said Marshall Lee, CTO and co-founder, Enmotus. “By utilizing a storage hypervisor approach, our FuzeDrive software is able to easily virtualize and manage such devices, creating a seamless way for data center managers to move up the storage acceleration curve with minimal impact and thereby preserving their investment.”