Last month's update of Fusion-io's ioTurbine caching software was designed to enhance the manageability of large-scale enterprise software environments.
The potential technology proposition here is thusly expressed: Development shops can add flash memory performance to the workflow environment ahead of shared storage refresh cycles.
With much of our analytical and transaction datacenter workflow performance now looking at in-memory advancements, should caching technology also be brought to the fore?
Fusion-io says that this is a means of avoiding "forklift SAN replacements" and bringing application caching into play with one-click functionality when needed.
"Caching technology is a powerful tool for large-scale enterprises looking to add the value of flash performance without forklift SAN replacements," said Lee Caswell, Fusion-io vice president, virtualization products group.
"With one-click application caching and streamlined centralized management, ioTurbine intelligently directs application performance to server-side flash, while preserving the data protection and capacity benefits of shared storage. Caching algorithms redirect billions of operations from SANs to servers to make enterprise datacenters more efficient."
As many readers know, server and storage systems have long relied on caching to speed local performance — the practice of caching across the datacenter is rapidly growing since server flash is 1,000 times less expensive than disk drives when examined in a cost per operation analysis.
"Caching can drive improved I/O efficiency and cost savings by ensuring that servers and storage each focus on their core respective competencies of performance and capacity," said Mark Peters, senior analyst at the Enterprise Strategy Group.
When caching is used to support hundreds or thousands of VMs, data management becomes a critical consideration. Because of this, Fusion ioTurbine offers "common management" across physical and virtual servers. The ioTurbine software is also optimized for integration with central management reporting solutions such as VMware vCenter and is tolerant of widely distributed environments.
