From Pivot3, Acuity Priority-Aware HCI Software Platform

Pivot3, Inc. announced Acuity, a priority-aware HCI software platform that enables IT to confidently consolidate multiple mixed-application workloads onto a single infrastructure while also delivering breakthrough performance.

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Until now, organizations have deployed HCI for single, standalone use cases – like VDI – due to the unpredictable performance of multiple applications on the system, lack of automation, and inefficient scale and capacity that restrict datacenter consolidation. Acuity software platform delivers performance, scale and efficiency across a wider range of applications to overcome these limitations.

It simplifies workload management with the firm’s fifth-generation policy-based management engine and comprehensive data services. As a priority-aware software platform, it intelligently and automatically applies resources to mission-critical applications for guaranteed performance and predictable results.

Acuity’s policy-based management engine has been optimized to make efficient use of NVMe PCIe flash to deliver six times the performance of conventional HCI solutions. This means IT can improve response times for databases, enterprise applications, business analytics and VDI. It also delivers increased density, enabling IT to run two to three times more VMs per HCI node, resulting in a smaller data center footprint and reductions in OPEX and CAPEX.

Architected for performance
Acuity is architected for performance, leveraging the acceleration of low-latency NVMe PCIe flash. With NVMe PCIe flash data path performance, under control of the company’s advanced policy-based QoS engine, organizations can consolidate performance- and latency-sensitive applications onto HCI with flash that is 450% faster than SATA SSD and 119% faster than SAS SSD.

“Customers have experienced success with hyperconverged systems running single applications such as VDI, and now they are increasingly using the same systems to handle multiple mixed workloads,” said Tim Stammers, senior analyst, 451 Group. “But that can create resource contention between applications, and the risk of not meeting performance SLAs. One solution is to combine QoS controls with the efficient use of high performance resources such as NVMe flash. Pivot3’s Acuity platform uses NVMe flash alongside policy-based – but sophisticted – QoS controls.“

Policy-based simplicity and priority-aware intelligence
Acuity was built to provide IT with a simple, automated way to manage a multiple workload environment and guarantee the performance of the applications that matter most to their business. Acuity’s policy-based simplicity and priority-aware intelligence stem from its QoS engine integrated with its multi-tier architecture.

Its features include:

• Pre-defined performance and user-defined data protection policies to meet SLAs in a mixed workload environment;

• Automatic workload prioritization and real-time multi-tier data placement;

• Self-management with a customizable performance dashboard for ongoing management decisions based on extensive application insight;

• A policy scheduler allowing administrators to schedule performance and data protection policy changes based on cyclical business processes that change application requirements.

Broad data services and hardware platforms for enterprise IT Needs
Acuity comes with a set of data services that help enterprise IT drive efficiency in the data center, including the company’s patented erasure coding which delivers up to 82% usable storage capacity. Additional data services include snapshots and clones, application-integrated data protection, data reduction, and integrations with vSphere and VMware vCenter. Acuity runs on a broad set of HCI nodes; all nodes offer flexibility in capacity, CPU, RAM and graphics cards to meet specific use case requirements.

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“Our clients across all verticals will benefit from this innovative software platform that combines the best-of-breed performance acceleration technology with a simple, policy-based management capability,” said Stewart Sonneland, principal and CEO, Strategic Integrators, Inc. “On top of a highly-available, ultra-reliable and scalable infrastructure, Pivot3 introduces a new level of control and choice to how businesses consolidate and modernize their datacenters with the release of Acuity.“

“Pivot3’s new Acuity software platform blends the performance and QoS attributes of Pivot3’s N5 flash array with the capacity efficiencies of its patented erasure coding. This combination gives our geographically-distributed IT environments the performance and ‘set-and-forget’ management simplicity it needs,” said James Gunnarson, senior systems engineer, ProAmpac. “After evaluating multiple legacy and conventional HCI architecture solutions, we deployed Pivot3 as part of a hardware upgrade and IT centralization initiative. By consolidating multiple enterprise applications onto one system, we have the agility to guarantee performance of critical database and ERP system applications across our facilities, while also reducing costs and improving resiliency. Plus, Pivot3’s top-notch customer support is always there to help us get the most out of our systems.“

“With Acuity, we’re turbocharging HCI and redefining the next generation of the enterprise datacenter,” said Ron Nash, CEO, Pivot3. “Businesses are demanding more out of hyperconvergence, and expect these solutions to effectively manage multiple mission-critical applications. By bringing together breakthrough performance and sophisticated intelligence, we’re supporting the transition to the private cloud and software-defined datacenter in a way that’s never been seen before.“