PrimaryIO: Server-Based Flash Acceleration With vSphere API for IO Filtering Support

PrimaryIO, Inc. announced the general availability of Application Performance Acceleration (APA) V1.0 solution for vSphere 6.

APA V1.0 is a Vmware, Inc.‘s certified solution that provides operability with vSphere APIs for IO Filtering to enable enhanced I/O performance of virtualized tier-1 applications, such as Oracle database, Microsoft SQL Server, MongoDB and MySQL.

APA V1.0 with vSphere APIs for IO filtering provide both read and write-caching of frequently-accessed data to increase IO performance of virtualized mission-critical database applications, while leveraging unique intelligence to dynamically distinguish primary (such as database write transactions or indexes) from secondary data to provide highly efficient utilization of expensive server-based flash storage resources. This enables a high level of performance for tier-1 database applications deployed on VMs, an important goal for the enterprise cloud data centers.

“The IO performance requirements of virtualized tier-1 applications, especially as VM densities and IO demands spiral, is a major challenge for the success of enterprise private cloud initiatives,” said Lorenzo Salhi, CEO, PrimaryIO. “We are gratified that PrimaryIO APA operates with vSphere APIs for IO Filtering, and can uniquely address enhancing the performance of virtualized mission-critical applications.“

“vSphere APIs for IO Filtering enable third-party software-defined data services with the highest possible level of operability with vSphere,” said Skip Bacon, VP, products, storage and availability, Vmware. “We are pleased to see PrimaryIO APA software provide support for vSphere APIs for IO Filtering, enabling storage acceleration data services for business-critical applications.“

“Virtualizing tier-1 applications is critical to the success of private cloud deployment as private clouds must encompas the majority of workloads already in use,” said Mark Peters, senior analyst, Enterprise Strategy Group. “PrimaryIO APA delivers demonstrable benefits allowing enterprises to achieve the promise of virtualization for cost effectiveness and efficiency while also maximizing business-critical application performance.“

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Key features:

• APA was created to help virtualization administrators scale storage performance to support growing tier-1 application deployment, without the traditionally associated expensive upgrades to storage hardware.

• Application-optimized storage acceleration: Utilizing application awareness, firm’s APA caches critical, latency-sensitive application IOs in order to boost overall application performance while enabling optimal utilization of data center server and networking resources.

• Fault-tolerant data caching: APA supports write-around and write-back caching with full fault-tolerance in face of node failures since writes to cache are replicated to up to two additional nodes.

• Cluster-wide flash resource: APA aggregates server-based flash storage across vSphere clusters as a cluster-wide resource enabling all nodes in the cluster to leverage the flash caching benefits even though a subset may already have flash deployed.

• Full vCenter integration for operational transparency: A software-only solution, APA requires no new hardware and provides out-of-the-box storage acceleration across the range of vCenter-supported storage protocols including NFS, FC, iSCSI, and FCoE while seamlessly supporting VMware-certified SSD solutions. As a supported solution of both vSphere Storage Policy Based Management (SPBM) and vSphere APIs for IO Filtering, customers will be able to adopt APA with the full assurance of compatibility and supportability.

APA 1.0 for vSphere 6 is available.