FlashSoft SE-V Applies Enterprise Flash To Accelerate Application Performance in Virtual Machine Environments Based on VMware vSphere 5
FlashSoft Corporation, the Flash Virtualization Company, today announced the immediate commercial availability of FlashSoft SE-V, the company’s solution for accelerating application performance on Windows Server in virtual machine environments based on VMware vSphere 5. The new solution is based on FlashSoft SE, the company’s software that enables enterprise flash as a server-tier cache, and is already used today in numerous business-critical production environments. Today FlashSoft brings the same performance benefits to applications running on virtual machines (VMs) based on the VMware ESXi software platform. The solution is available for free evaluation through a 30-day “Try Before You Buy” program: http://bit.ly/mz7R53.
Enterprise IT sees virtualization as a key to agility and value in computing infrastructure, and enterprise flash memory is a key to enabling applications to deliver necessary performance when running in virtual servers. However, as enterprise flash hardware continues to get larger and faster, it’s become apparent that a key requirement for enterprise flash is the software that enables flash memory to work as a high-performance read-write cache in the server. This “tier minus one” cache based on enterprise flash eliminates the IO bottlenecks that restrict the performance and capacity of enterprise applications, especially when running in virtual servers.
FlashSoft SE-V is designed specifically for Windows Server instances running on VMs supported by the VMware ESXi platform. In performance tests, a standard OLTP application suite based on MS-SQL was accelerated by more than 3X — the same kind of performance acceleration that FlashSoft SE provides in non-virtual server environments.
“The core of FlashSoft SE-V is based on our proven FlashSoft SE product, so it delivers the same degree of performance and reliability that our customers enjoy with our current product,” said Ted Sanford, founder and CEO of FlashSoft. “Now IT managers can apply flash memory to enhance application performance in virtual machines based on the VMware platform.”
Performance Report, User Guide and Video Available
To introduce the FlashSoft Solution for VMware environments, FlashSoft is providing a set of technical bulletins for IT administrators, including:
- “Accelerating Application Performance on Virtual Machines” – this guide provides an overview of the solution architecture and provides the result of several performance tests to demonstrate the solution’s ability to enhance application performance on the VMware platform: http://www.flashsoft.com/flashsoft-SE-V-performance-report
- “User’s Guide to FlashSoft SE on VMware” – this guide gives step-by-step instructions for the installation and configuration of the FlashSoft software in a VMware environment and provides practical guidance on performance optimization.
- “See For Yourself” video – Hosted on the FlashSoft website, this brief video provides a side-by-side performance comparison of applications running in VMs: http://www.flashsoft.com/videos.html
In addition, FlashSoft is extending its 30-day “Try Before You Buy” program to its VMware solution. Due to the unique evaluation requirements of VMware environments, the evaluation program for VMware software will allow FlashSoft SE to be installed on multiple VMs on a single host server.
Both FlashSoft SE and FlashSoft SE-V offer technical advantages including:
- Provides a persistent read-write cache in the compute tier.
- Compatible with any SSD: SATA, SAS or PCIe.
- Requires no modifications to data, applications or storage; the SSD-based cache is completely transparent to the server and storage infrastructure.
- Automatically tunes over 60 operational parameters to support specific SSD architectures and application types.
- Minimal server overhead; optimized metadata management and cache design enable 100MB of server memory to manage 1TB of flash, utilizing only 5% of CPU.
Pricing and Availability
FlashSoft SE-V for Windows Server/VMware is available for evaluation and purchase now. To learn more about the 30-day “Try Before You Buy” program, visit http://bit.ly/mz7R53. The new FlashSoft SE-V product is licensed for use in multiple Windows Server VMs running on a single VMware server. License cost is based on the number of virtual machines on the server and the SSD or PCIe flash card used to host the cache.