SolidFire's flash storage systems that include tools for providers to fine tune Quality of Service (QoS) controls is now interoperable with VMware vSphere Storage I/O Control, the all-flash array vendor announced this morning.
SolidFire QoS settings are automatically adjusted on the fly to match any VMware vSphere Storage I/O Control changes, reducing the need for storage administrator intervention. The company says this capability will enable IT managers to deliver predictable storage performance to each individual virtual machine within their infrastructure, while enabling applications and end-user experiences to be more predictable and easier to manage.
Wright, a former Rackspace executive, founded SolidFire in 2009. It has several strategic partnerships with VMware and Citrix and integrates with OpenStack. The company has landed several service provider customers including COLT, ViaWest, Internap, ServInt and SunGard, among others.
While it has had a lot of success with service providers, it has been targeting enterprises with new features to entice them.
SolidFire’s QoS capabilities enable IT managers to designate, manage and deliver predictable virtual machine performance from the host all the way through to the underlying SolidFire storage system.
“SolidFire with VMware vSphere Storage I/O Control provides a tunable and predictable storage infrastructure for each virtual machine datastore,” said SolidFire’s founder and CEO Dave Wright. “VMware managers can oversee provision storage policies within the virtual infrastructure that are then enforced down to each virtual disk in the SolidFire storage system.”
The company's QoS architecture aims to increase VM awareness and management granularity between the host and storage system layers of the data center:
- SolidFire’s interoperability with VMware vSphere Storage I/O Control, with storage-enforced QoS, enables predictable VM performance
- Interoperability allows for automated storage performance allocation and manages minimum, maximum and burst performance based on per-VM SIOC requirements
- Dynamic performance allocation to datastores reduces the need to over-provision storage, allowing more VM deployment
- Automated orchestration dynamically adjusts volume IOPS allocation, matching each virtual machine’s VMware vSphere Storage I/O Control settings, even as those settings are changed and virtual machines are moved from datastore to datastore
- End-to-end QoS control reduces “noisy neighbors” and allows for the consolidation of multiple performance-sensitive applications onto a shared infrastructure
