Fusion-io
ViON presents the Fusion-io suite of memory tier data acceleration solutions based on NAND flash memory technology. The Fusion-io hardware and software solutions provide a dramatic increase in I/O response time by keeping the most active data close to applications inside the server rather than on a SAN or NAS storage subsystem.
Fusion-io integrates flash as a new tier of memory (called ioMemory) with greater density than RAM and performance increases over regular spinning disk. This new memory tier is nearly as fast as memory, non-volatile, with orders of magnitude more capacity for far less power consumption and cost.
To take full advantage of the flash drive speed, Fusion-io developed the Virtual Storage Layer (VSL), a flash-optimized OS subsystem software layer. VSL allows the flash to interact independently with each host CPU core, in parallel, as a new tier of memory, similar to L1, L2, L3 or in DRAM. VSL simultaneously presents the flash to the application layer as a normal block-based storage device so that existing applications do not require modification.
The basis for Fusion-io’s solution set is the ioDrive flash drive. The ioDrive2 Multi-level Cell (MLC) drive comes in several sizes from 365 GB up to 1.2 TB per drive. The Duo version of comes in a 2.4 TB size. The ioDrive is also available in a Single Level Cell (SLC) NAND type.
The ioDrive Octal packs the highest IOPS in the industry, 6 GB/s of bandwidth, and 5.12 TB of capacity into a single PCI Express device. This enables organizations to tackle previously unattainable workload challenges with a single server, eliminating the latency impact of accessing backing data stores.
The new ioFX memory tier accelerates leading creative applications freeing time for visual artists to explore more ideas, even under today’s tight deadlines.
- Tuned for sustained performance in multithreaded applications
- Work on 2K, 4K and 5K content interactively, in full resolution
- Manipulate stereoscopic content in real-time
- Accelerate video and image editing and compositing
- Speed video playback
- Powerful throughput to maximize GPU processing
- Simplify and accelerate encoding and transcoding as well as other data-intensive activities in contemporary digital production
The ioDrive can be utilized in both virtualized and non-virtualized server environments to dramatically increase the speed to read and write the most active application data.
The Fusion-io solution suite includes:
Non-Virtualized Environments:
- directCache which transforms ioMemory into a block-based storage cache by intelligently placing the most frequently accessed data in flash memory for increased performance. Tightly integrated with Fusion’s flash-optimized ioMemory subsystem and Virtual Storage Layer, directCache in a non-virtualized server minimizes translation layers to deliver lower cache latency and enable immediate application workload performance improvements.
Virtualized Environments:
- ioCache uses ioDrive capacity as a cache to satisfy I/O for virtualized applications in the server. ioCache targets performance on a per VM basis, or per file, volume or disk, ensuring that performance is consistently delivered to virtualized applications that need it. With ioCache there is no trade-off between performance and flexibility in the VMware environment. ioCache supports vMotion so that VMs can be moved at will. This can be combine with ioTurbine software which dynamically allocates the cache as VMs come and go distributing the cache’s benefits to all VMs.
- ioTurbine provides intelligent application-level caching software that transforms an ioDrive(s) into transparent, acceleration devices for virtualized workloads to cache hot data off any storage system, whether SAN- or NFS-based. ioTurbine caches data within hosts, close to application workloads, delivering unparalleled low latency. With ioTurbine, Fusion-io customers can deploy terabytes of flash-based cache to significantly accelerate performance of virtualized workloads, eliminate I/O bottlenecks, increase virtual machine density per physical host, and minimize incremental investments in external storage infrastructure.
Shared / Clustered Environments:
ION Data Accelerator™ transforms industry-leading server platforms into powerful, shared ioMemory application acceleration appliances. ION software delivers Fusion Powered performance to shared applications, while enhancing existing enterprise storage infrastructure. It also provides easy deployment, management, and monitoring of single-node or dual-node clusters, and supports SCSI storage protocols such as Fibre Channel, InfiniBand (SRP), and iSCSI.
ioSphere Management Software:
ioSphere gives you the ability to manage multiple hosts from one web console, centralizing ioMemory management to a single web-based interface, easing administration and saving you time.
To learn more about the Fusion-io suite, to include a presentation and/or demonstration, please submit a request.
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ViON presents the Hitachi Unified Storage Virtual Machine (HUS VM) storage subsystem.